I  I 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 
Kate  Gordon  Moore 


/... 


THE 


SEAT   OF   AUTHORITY    IN    RELIGION. 


—  ^ 

THE 

SEAT    OF    AUTHORITY 


IN 


RELIGION 


BY 


JAMES    MARTINEAU 

Hon.  LLD.   Harv.  :  S.T.D.  Lugd.  Bat. 
D.D.  Edin.  :  D.C.L.  Oxon. 


FOURTH  EDITION 
RE  VISED. 


LONGMANS,      GREEN,      AND      CO. 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,     LONDON 

NEW   YORK   AND   BOMBAY 

1S98 

\_AU  rights  reserved.^ 


3 


PREFACE. 

1890. 

The  critical  reader  may  possibly  discover  that  this  book  has 
not  taken  shape  at  once  aus  einem  Gusse ;  and  he  will  at  least 
excuse  a  few  words  in  explanation  of  its  origin  and  formation. 

At  the  request  of  a  literary  friend  in  New  England,  editing 
a  monthly  periodical,  I  wrote,  between  1872  and  1875,  a  series 
of  theological  papers  which  were  designed,  when  complete,  to 
present  a  compendious  survey  of  the  ground  both  of  Natural 
and  Historical  religion  as  accepted  in  Christendom.  Before 
the  plan  had  been  half  worked  out  (i.e.,  after  the  appearance 
of  fourteen  papers) ,  the  periodical  came  to  an  end  ;  and  in  the 
absence  of  the  motive  of  a  fixed  engagement,  the  further 
materials  which  I  had  collected  were  thrown  aside,  to  free 
me  for  the  studies  in  another  field  which  have  occupied  me 
since.  But  the  forlorn  rudiment  of  an  intended  structure, 
with  its  scaffolding  still  standing  and  its  roof  rotting  on  the 
ground,  never  ceased  to  haunt  and  reproach  me ;  and  when 
released  from  preoccupation  with  philosophy  two  years  ago,  I 
at  once  rushed  to  the  fair  field  which  I  had  uselessly  deformed,, 
and,  with  no  little  dismay,  appraised  the  tumbled  bricks  and 
unhewn  stone  so  long  abandoned  by  the  builder.  Crumbling 
and  weatherstained,  they  could  no  longer  be  trusted  or  wrought ; 
and  nothing  remained  but  to  mould  and  quarry  as  well  as 
build  anew,  accepting  only  the  working  plans  from  the  past. 

So  great  in  the  interval  had  been  the  gains  of  historical  re- 
search, in  regard  especially  to  the  growth  of  the  Churcli  in 
the  first  two  centuries,  that  it  was  impossible  to  resume  my 
task  till  I  had  overtaken  the  movement  in  advance  by  follow- 

84GS1)1 


vi  PREFACE. 

ing  the  footsteps  which  led  to  the  higher  point  of  view.  This 
recovery  of  a  true  position  is  now  rendered  comparatively  easy 
by  the  striking  improvement,  in  condensation,  critical  fairness, 
and  literary  form,  of  modern  theological  authorship :  so  that, 
under  such  guidance  as  that  of  Scholten,  Hatch,  Pfleiderer, 
Holtzmann,  Harnack,  and  Weizsacker,  even  a  veteran  student 
may  find  it  possible,  with  no  very  wide  reading,  to  readjust  his 
judgments  to  the  altered  conditions  of  the  time.  To  a  fresh 
study  of  the  early  Christian  writings  in  or  out  of  the  canon, 
under  the  lights  of  this  newer  literature,  are  due  the  third, 
fourth,  and  fifth  books  of  the  present  volume,  and  a  great 
part  of  the  second  chapter  of  Book  II.  All  that  precedes  is, 
in  the  main,  a  reproduction  of  the  American  papers.  That 
this  part  contains  a  summary  of  the  same  ethical  doctrine  as 
that  which  is  more  fully  developed  in  the  "  Types  of  Ethical 
Theory  "  will  not,  I  hope,  be  regarded  as  an  inexcusable  itera- 
tion. In  its  distinctive  characteristic  I  find,  in  truth,  the  very 
"  Seat  of  Authority  "  of  which  I  was  in  search  :  so  that  there 
was  no  help  for  it,  unless  I  were  content  with  the  mere  ex- 
posure of  illusory  authorities  unrelieved  by  the  indication  of 
any  that  is  real. 

I  am  prepared  to  hear  that,  after  dispensing  with  miracles 
and  infallible  persons,  I  have  no  right  to  speak  of  "  authority  " 
at  all,  the  intuitional  assurance  which  I  substitute  for  it  being 
nothing  but  confidence  in  my  own  reason.  If  to  rest  on 
authority  is  to  mean  an  acceptance  of  what,  as  foreign  to  my 
faculty,  I  cannot  know,  in  mere  reliance  on  the  testimony  of  one 
Avho  can  and  does,  I  certainly  find  no  such  basis  for  religion  ; 
inasmuch  as  second-hand  belief,  assented  to  at  the  dictation 
of  an  initiated  expert,  without  personal  response  of  thought 
and  reverence  in  myself,  has  no  more  tincture  of  religion  in 
it  than  any  other  lesson  learned  by  rote.  The  mere  resort  to 
testimony  for  information  beyond  our  province  does  not  fill 
the  meaning  of  '  authority  ' ;  which  we  never  acknowledge  till 
that  which  speaks  to  us  from  another  and  a  higher  strikes 
home   and   wakes   the   echoes  in   ourselves,  and  is  thereby 


PREFACE.  vii 

instantly  transferred  from  external  attestation  to  self-evidence. 
And  this  response  it  is  which  makes  the  moral  intuitions, 
started  by  outward  appeal,  reflected  back  by  inward  venera- 
tion, more  than  egoistic  phenomena,  and  turning  them  into 
correspondency  between  the  universal  and  the  individual  mind, 
invests  them  with  true  '  authority.'  We  trust  in  them,  not 
with  any  rationalist  arrogance  because  they  are  our  own,  but 
j)recisely  because  they  are  not  our  own,  with  awe  and  aspira- 
tion. The  ro77sciovsness  of  authority  is  doul)tless  human  :  l)ut 
conditional  on  the  source  being  divine. 


PREFACE  TO  THE   THIRD  EDITION. 

1891. 

Since  the  issue  of  the  second  edition  of  this  book,  numer- 
ous reviews  of  it  have  appeared  which  I  cannot  treat  with 
silence,  as  if  they  gave  me  nothing  to  learn.  Such  of  tliem 
indeed  as  simply  pronounce,  ex  cathedra,  the  critic's  judgment 
of  approval  or  condemnation,  after  a  fair  report  of  its  con- 
tents, may  well  be  left  to  speak  for  themselves  ;  they  give 
legitimate  guidance  to  readers  who  see  reason  to  trust  them. 
Others  which,  under  the  influence  of  theological  antipathy, 
do  but  travesty  the  book,  or  pick  out  from  its  contents  such 
phrases  or  thoughts  ad  invidiam,  as  may  best  repel  the  reader, 
spring  from  a  state  of  mind  inaccessible  to  words  of  mine. 
But  there  remain  a  few  to  which  I  owe  an  insight  into  the 
defects  or  weak  points  of  my  own  exposition,  and  by  negotia- 
tion with  which  a  possibility  seems  open  of  essential  concur- 
rence on  the  theory  of  Authority.  I  hope  it  will  not  shock 
my  critic  in  the  Spectator,  or  Dr.  Dale  in  the  Contemporary, 
if  I  say  that,  on  this  fundamental  point,  I  see  my  way  to 
substantial  agreement  with  all  that  they  press  upon  my 
attention. 

Through  a  common  inadvertence,  these  reviewers  address 
themselves  to  a  different  question  from  that  with  which  this 
book  attempts  to  deal.  By  the  terms  of  the  title  I  limit 
myself  to  the  treatment  of  "  Authority  ?»  Rclifiioti."  They 
have  pushed  the  discussion  beyond  these  bounds,  and 
answered  me  by  fetching  in  from  alien  territory'  examples  of 
authority  which  do  not  come  within  my  definition.  Were  I 
to  admit  all  that  is  said  about  them,  no  position  taken  up  in 


::  PREFACE    TO    THIRD  EDITION. 

the  opening  chapters  of  this  volume  would  be  affected  in  the 
least.  The  Sjyectatoi-  mistakes  me  in  saying  that  I  "  repudi- 
ate and  almost  deride  the  notion  of  any  kind  of  authority 
except  that  which  the  conscience  enforces  on  the  nature  of 
man."*  On  the  contrary,  I  expressly  distinguish  two  kinds 
of  authority,  one  of  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  con- 
science ;  viz.,  authority  for  intellectual  assent  to  what  I  learn 
from  persons  better  informed  ;  and  authority  for  reverence 
and  devotion  to  the  claims  of  higher  character  and  diviner 
life  :  the  one,  authority  over  the  understanding  ;  the  other, 
over  the  will. 

I  do  not  disparage  the  former  as  an  adequate  ground  of  new 
knowledge  ;  I  only  contend  that  it  has  no  tincture  of  religion 
in  it ;  it  justifies  a  belief  to  the  reason ;  it  originates  and 
demands  no  worship  in  the  heart.  When  a  judge  upon  the 
bench  accepts  information  elicited  from  a  competent  witness, 
he  performs  a  rational  act,  and  nothing  more.  And  so  do 
readers  at  home,  when  they  assure  themselves  of  the  existence 
of  foreign  countries  on  the  report  of  travellers  who  have 
visited  them.  And  could  messengers  pass  from  world  to 
world  and  bring  with  them  means  of  accrediting  their  story  of 
things  invisible,  no  less  reasonable  would  it  be  to  welcome  the 
extended  knowledge,  but  also  no  more  religious.  Far  from 
thinking  that  "  we  should  no  more  lean  upon  the  word"  of 
such  a  visitor  "  than  upon  the  word  of  a  dreamer  or  the 
guess  of  an  historian,"  I  should  say,  When  once  satisfied 
that  the  reporter  is  such  a  messenger,  we  should  be  fools,  did 
we  not  accept  his  tidings  ;  to  do  so  would  be  an  act  of  mere 
common  sense  ;  not,  I  submit,  of  religion.  The  gain  is 
simply  tantamount  to  a  filling-in  of  the  cosmic  map  and  the 
human  history,  with  similar  significance  (of  mere  pheno- 
menal knowledge)  to  the  men  of  science  and  to  the  saints. 
Touching  no  springs  of  spiritual  life,  and  susceptible  of  no 
inward  verification,  it  lifts  no  soul  into  nearer  union  with  God. 
The  second-hand  belief  which  I  take  up  from  a  witness  who 

*  Aug.  23rd,  1890. 


PREFACE    TO    THIRD  EDITION. 


XI 


knows  what  is  incognizable  to  myself  you  cannot  draw  into 
the  essence  of  religion.  But  the  primary  homage  which 
reveals  to  me  my  relation  to  the  beauty  of  holiness  and  the 
mandate  of  the  highest  Will,  you  can  never  part  b}-  one 
hair's  breadth  from  the  essence  of  religion. 

Is    then  religious    authority   a   mere    "  subjective "    rule, 
"  wdiich   conscience   enforces   on   the   nature  of  man  "  ?     A 
power  which  can  "  enforce  something  on  the  nature  of  man  " 
must  be   above   that   nature   and   not  a  piece  of  it :  and  if 
conscience   be   taken    in   this    sense,    as  an    authority  over 
humanity,  felt  within  but  with  appeal  descending  from  beyond, 
it  passes  into  a  Divine  reality,  communing  with  us  as  person 
with  person,  seeking  the  assimilation  of  spirit  with  spirit. 
And  this  is  precisely  the  relation  which  opens  upon  our  view 
when   the   moral   intuitions    spread    forth   their  contents  in 
articulate  consciousness.     If   therefore  by  "  subjective  "    b3 
meant  an  affection  limited  to  the  human  subject,  the  epithet 
marks  precisely  what  this  experience  rejects :  the  authority 
felt  to  be  over  us  is  eo  ijyso  objective  ;  alighting  upon  conscious- 
ness, but  from  an  illuminating  source  known  only  as  Divine. 
This  is  not  exclusively  "  subjective,"  unless  all  inspiration  is 
so ;  if  this  word  is  to  be  applied,   by  way  of   reproach,   to 
all  that  is  given  us  in  consciousness,  how  can  you  exempt 
the   greatest   prophet    from   it '?      Does   not  his   inspiration 
arrive  at  him  in  the  shape  of  thought  and   feeling '?  and  if 
in  his  case  thought  and  feeling  can  carry  in  it  an  immediate 
report    of  its    Divine    source,  what    is    to   hinder   the  moral 
experiences  of  humanit}^  from  bringing  with  them  the  same 
light  ?     I  own  that  this  style  of  criticism  deeply  humbles  me, 
not  by  its  efficiency,  but  by  its  inappositeness,  showing  as  it 
does  how  absolutely  I  have  failed  to  put  even  the  best  class 
of  readers  in  possession  of  my  meaning.     The  whole  purpose 
of  the   first   Book  in    this  volume  is  to  show  that  religious 
authority  is  necessarily  objective  and  supernatural :  and  my 
critics  charge  me  with  contendmg  that  it  is  purely  subjective 
and  natural. 


xii  PREFACE    TO    THIRD   EDITION. 

The  relation  of  a  child  to  his  parents,  far  from  embarrass- 
ing the  doctrine  for  which  I  plead,  very  happily  combines  and 
illustrates  the  two  types  of  "  authority; "  the  rational,  wielded 
by  those  who  know  more,  and  the  religious,  vested  in  the  higher 
and  larger  personality.  In  both  instances  we  may  speak  of 
the  attitude  of  the  dependent  nature  as  one  of  "  trust  "  ;  but 
the  word  will  cover  quite  a  different  state  of  mind  in  the  two 
cases :  in  the  first,  the  mere  contentment  with  a  witness's 
report  in  the  absence  of  first-hand  vision  ;  in  the  second,  the 
waking  echo  of  the  heart  to  the  mandates  of  the  riper  soul, 
with  the  uplooking  love  inseparable  from  such  secret  sympathy. 
It  is  the  latter  only  which  has  a  sacred  character ;  and  if  once 
obedience  begins  to  be  demanded  to  what  is  felt  to  be  unjust 
or  base,  the  inner  piety  instantly  turns  round,  and  makes  a 
rebel  even  of  the  child.  For  want  of  the  inner  verification, 
the  sanctity  of  the  act  is  gone ;  and  if  the  will  complies,  it  is 
under  protest  and  with  self-contempt.  Without  the  element 
of  personal  trust  based  on  moral  veneration  within  the  scale 
of  a  common  righteousness,  character  and  life  remain  outside 
the  sphere  of  religion. 

Dr.  Dale  is  so  far  from  disapproving  the  stress  which  I 
have  laid  on  the  "  inner  witness  of  the  spirit,"  that  he  rather 
censures  me  for  overlooking  the  great  part  assigned  to  it  by 
Calvin,  Owen,  and  other  reformers  of  the  Puritan  type.* 
There  is  justice  in  this  complaint ;  the  more  so  as  the  fact 
to  which  he  calls  attention  was  familiar  to  me  and  had  much 
to  do  with  the  attraction  I  have  always  felt,  in  spite  of  doc- 
trinal divergence,  towards  the  divines  of  that  school.  But 
writing  with  a  view  to  contemporary  wants  I  naturally  repre- 
sented Protestantism  to  myself  as  exhibited  in  its  literature 
since  the  time  of  Locke  :  and  that  alone  must  be  taken  as 
embraced  in  the  scope  of  my  argument. 

"  The  inward  witness,"  without  which  the  authority  of  no 
sacred  text  is  brought  home  to  us.  Dr.  Dale  would  fain  render 
valid  for  more  than  it  attests.     By  an  inference  from  analogy 
*  Gontemjiorary  Bevieiv,  Sept.  1890,  p,  407. 


PREFACE    TO    THIRD  EDITION.  xiii 

he  stretches  it  as  an  elastic  shield  over  an  indefinite  expanse 
of  scripture  which  has  it  not :  "  the  real  power  of  tlie  New 
Testament,"  he  says, — "  its  authority  for  myself, — must 
come  from  those  parts  of  it  in  which  I  find  God  and  God 
finds  me ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  I  am  free  to  say  that 
only  in  those  parts  is  there  any  divine  light  and  power  "  : 
"  parts  of  our  Lord's  teaching,  and  parts  of  the  teaching  of 
the  apostles,  which  have  not  '  found  us  yet  may  find  us  some 
day.'  "  *  Then,  when  that  day  comes,  they  will  acquire 
religious  authority :  meanwhile,  they  remain  without  it. 
And,  while  awaiting  their  chance,  are  they  to  be  treasured  as 
enigmatical  oracles  that  must  be  left  to  declare  themselves  ? 
If  not,  are  they  not  exposed  to  equal  possibilities  of  rising 
into  the  Divine,  or  sinking  into  the  ignobly  human '?  Am  I 
to  hang  in  suspense  till  the  injunction,  for  instance,  "  Give 
not  that  which  is  holy  unto  the  dogs,  neither  throw  your 
pearls  before  swine,  lest  haply  they  trample  them  under  their 
feet  and  turn  and  rend  you,"  "  finds  "  me  as  a  word  of  light 
and  love  ? 

Something  remains  to  be  said  in  order  to  relieve  the  critical 
portion  of  this  volume  from  certain  imputations  to  which  it 
has  been  mistakenly  exposed.  Without  either  re-opening  the 
many  controverted  questions  with  which  it  deals,  or  resenting 
the  many  hard  words  which  I  feel  to  have  done  me  wrong 
I  will  simply  clear  away  such  misapprehensions  as  may  be 
removed  by  a  bare  recital  of  facts.  In  my  former  Preface  I 
described  the  origin  of  this  book  as  an  intended  summary  of 
the  results  of  theological  study  up  to  the  year  1875  ;  the  sus- 
pension of  the  design  and  the  diversion  of  my  chief  attention 
to  philosophy,  till  1887-8 ;  and  my  devotion  of  two  years  to 
reading  myself  into  such  new  literature  as  brought  fresh 
evidence  into  the  questions  on  which  I  had  previously  pro- 
nounced. In  speaking  of  this  batch  of  supplementary  study  I 
unfortunately  expressed  my  gratitude  for  the  vastly  improved 
structure  of  German  theological  writings,  and  for  the  saving 


*  p.  410. 


xiv  PREFACE   TO    THIRD  EDITION. 

of  the  student's  time  through  such  excellent  literary  work- 
manship, mentioning  half  a  dozen  authors  by  way  of  example. 
Taking  advantage  of  this  passage,  more  than  one  of  my  critics 
have  treated  it  as  a  complete  map  of  my  travels  on  theological 
ground,  and  have  rebuked  the  arrogant  levity  of  such  ill- 
secured  judgment.  As  "  a  disciple  of  that  grossly  one-sided 
book  '  Supernatural  religion  '  "  I  am  said  simply  to  "  repro- 
duce the  exploded  absurdities  of  the  Tiibingen  school  "  :  * 
and,  according  to  Professor  Sanday,  I  think  it  enough,  in 
dealing  with  "  the  most  perplexing  of  human  problems,'' 
"  to  go  to  a  few  of  the  latest  German  writers,  not  to  weigh 
and  test  their  hypotheses,  and  explore  all  round  their  data, 
but  simply  to  take  their  conclusions  ready  made,  translate 
them  into  English,  and  spread  them  broadcast  as  a  new  Gos- 
pel." t  And  it  is  considered  a  sufficient  proof  of  one-sidedness 
that  I  do  not  quote  Bishops  Lightfoot  and  Westcott,  Ezra 
Abbot,  Schiirer,  or  Professor  Eamsay.I 

Whether  this  attempt  to  discredit  a  writer  whom  you  think 
"  better  left  unread  "  §  is  less  or  more  of  a  wrong  than  the 
omission  to  quote  one  from  whom  you  regretfully  dissent,  I 
do  not  pretend  to  decide.  My  answer  shall  be  a  mere  tran- 
script from  my  memory.  The  critical  contents  of  this  volume 
result  from  the  direct  study,  seldom  intermitted  through 
more  than  sixty  years,  of  the  Scriptures  themselves  and  the 
cognate  literature  affecting  the  early  Christian  Church  ;  and 
are  not  got  up  at  second  hand  from  "  the  ready  made  con- 
clusions "  of  any  theological  school,  though  deeply  indebted 
to  the  insight  gained  by  the  labours  of  several.  The  book 
on  "  Supernatural  religion  "  I  have  never  seen,  and  know 
only  from  Bishop  Lightfoot's  answer  to  it.  Westcott,  Ezra 
Abbot,  and  Schiirer  I  have  read  with  much  warm  appreciation, 
but  without  altered  conviction ;  and  the  last  of  them  with 
the  irresistible  inference  that  scholarly  judgment  is  verging 

*  Bajitist  Magazine,  June  1890. 

t  Expositorij  Times,  Sept.  1890,  pp.  283,  284. 

J  lb.  p.  284.  a.  §  lb.  p.  284.  b. 


PREFACE    TO    THIRD  EDITION.  xv 

more  and  more  towards  a  negative  verdict  on  the  Johan- 
nine  question.  During  the  growth  of  the  Tiihingen  school, 
I  was  guarded  against  any  unquestioning  surrender  to  the 
influence  of  Baur  hy  habitual  reading  of  Ewald's  "  Jahrbiicher 
der  biblischen  Wissenschaft,"  so  far  as  the  enthusiasm  of  one 
man  of  genius  can  countervail  the  intellectual  grasp  of  another. 
All  this,  I  am  well  aware,  amounts  to  just  nothing  at  all 
when  compared  with  the  resources  of  some  of  my  learned 
critics  ;  but  however  small  it  may  be,  I  submit  that  it  is  not 
the  reading  of  a  partisan,  but  is  fairly  divided  between  the 
opposite  sides  of  the  chief  questions  on  which  I  have  touched. 
If  I  have  not  quoted  this  or  that  opponent  of  my  case,  it  is 
not  for  want  of  attention  to  his  plea,  but  simply  because  the 
line  of  reasoning  I  was  following  could  apparently  afford  to 
let  it  alone  ;  and  in  the  instance  of  the  late  Bishop  Lightfoot, 
because  his  chief  controversial  work  leaves  on  me  the  same 
impression  which  Pfleiderer  has  put  on  record  as  his  own.* 

In  his  strictures  on  my  view  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  and  the 
Ephesian  traditions  respecting  the  apostle  John,  Dr.  Dale, 
at  the  word  of  Irenaeus,  accepts  Polycarp  as  a  personal 
disciple  of  the  apostle  ;  and,  not  content  with  assailing  my 
doubts  on  the  subject  with  legitimate  arguments,  suggests  in 
the  following  sentences  that,  in  support  of  my  opinion,  I 
manipulate  the  evidences  unfairly  by  omission  of  important 
texts:  "As  Dr.  Martineau  satisfied  himself  that  Irenteus 
made  a  mistake  in  supposing  that  Polycarp  was  a  disciple  of 
the  apostle,  he  natnraUi/  omits  all  reference  to  the  letter  (^f 
Irenseus  to  Victor,  bishop  of  Pome  (a.d.  190-198  or  199),  in 
reference  to  the  Paschal  Controversy,  in  which  he  says  that 
Anicetus,  a  previous  Eoman  bishop,  was  unable  to  persuade 
Polycarp  to  give  up  the  Asiatic  custom  of  keeping  Easter, 
'  because  he  had  always  observed  it  with  John,  the  disciple  of 
our  Lord,  and  the  rest  of  the  apostles  with  whom  he  was 
associated.'     And  it  is  also  natural   that  he  should  omit  to 

*  "  The  Development  of  thGolo<,'y  in  Germany  since  Kant,  and  its 
progress  in  Great  Britain  since  IH^").''     p.  397. 


xvi  PREFACE    TO    THIRD  EDITION. 

notice  the  passages  in  Irenaeus's  great  work  '  against  Heresies ' 
(about  A.D.  185),  in  which  he  refers  to  John's  residence  at 
Ephesus.  But  the  letter  of  Polycrates,  who  was  bishop  of 
Ephesus  at  the  end  of  the  second  century,  to  Victor,  in  de- 
fence of  the  Asiatic  observance  of  Easter,  ought,  I  think,  to 
have  been  mentioned.  Polycrates  says,  '  For  in  Asia  great 
lights  have  fallen  asleep  which  shall  rise  again  in  the  day  of 
the  Lord's  appearing  ;  Philip,  one  of  the  tv/elve  apostles,  who 
sleeps  in  Hierapolis  ;  moreover,  John,  who  rested  upon  the 
bosom  of  the  Lord  and  bore  the  sacerdotal  plate,  both  a 
martyr  and  teacher  ;  he  is  buried  in  Ephesus.'  This  testi- 
mony is  very  important."  * 

The  reader  may  estimate  the  justice  of  this  rebuke  if  he 
will  turn  to  p.  235  of  this  volume,  where  he  will  find  the 
passages  which  it  was  '  natural  for  me  to  omit,'  from  the 
letter  of  Irenaeus  to  Victor,  and  from  that  of  Polycrates  to 
Victor  ;  and  to  p.  192,  where  he  will  find  quoted  from  Irenteus 
'  against  Heresies  '  the  other  missing  reference  to  John's  resi- 
dence at  Ephesus. 

*  Contem])oraTij  lievieiv,  Sept.  1890,  pp.  399,  400. 


CONTENTS, 


BOOK  I.     ■ 

AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAOE 

God  in  Nature 1 


CHAPTER   II. 
(ioD  IN  Humanity .      87 

CHAPTER  IIL 
Utilitarian  Substitute  for  Authority 70 

CHAPTER   IV. 
God  in  History 101 


BOOK   II. 

AUTHORITY   ARTIFICIALLY   ]\IISPLACED. 


CHAPTER   I. 
The  Cathoijcs  and  the  Cuuucu  ;        .        .        «        ,        •        •    1-7 

b 


XVIU 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  II, 

The  Protestants  and  the  Sceiptukes 

§  1.  The  Synoptical  Gospels      .... 
§  2.  The  Fourth  Gospel    ..... 

A.  External  Testunony 

B.  Internal  Character 

C.  Relation  to  the  Apocalypse 

D.  Relation  to  the  Paschal  Controversy 

E.  Marks  of  Time       .         . 

§  3.  Acts  of  the  Apostles  ..... 

A.  Relation  to  Luke's  Gospel 

B.  Relation  to  Paul's  Epistles 


PAGE 

ICO 

181 

189 

190 
208 
217 
227 
236 

243 

244 
253 


BOOK  III. 

DIVINE   AUTHORITY  INTERMIXED   WITH   HUMAN   THINGS. 


CHAPTER   I. 
The  Hum.'vn  and  the  DiyiNE  in  History 

CHAPTER  II. 
What  are  '  Natural  '  and  '  Revealed  Religion  '  ? 


287 


.     300 


BOOK   IV, 

SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE    ELEMENTS   FROM   CHRISTENDOM. 


CHAPTER   I. 
Revealed  Religion  and  Apocalyptic  Religion    . 


315 


CONTENTS. 


XIX 


CHAPTER  II. 

Theories  of  the  Person  of  Jesus 

§  1.  As  Messiah         .... 

§  2.  As  Piisen  from  the  Dead     . 

§  3.  As  the  Spiritual  Adam 

§  4.  As  '  the  Word '  . 

A.  The  Alexandrine  Logos  . 

B.  The  Word  '  made  Flesh  ' 


PAGE 

326 

826 

358 

378 

399 

899 
422 


CHAPTER   III. 

Theories  of  the  Work  of  Jesus  . 

§  1.  The  Sense  of  Sin  in  Christendom 

§  2.  The  Apostolic  Doctrine  of  Redemption 

§  3.  The  W^ork  of  the  Incarnate  Logos     . 

CHAPTER   IV. 

Theories  of  Union  with  God 

§  1.  Present  Media  of  Gnice 

§  2.  Future  Crown  of  Life         »        ..         , 


450 

450 
461 
490 


513 

613 

546 


BOOK  V. 

THE   DIVINE   IN   THE   HUMAN. 


ClIAI'TER   I. 


The   Veil  takkn  away 


CHAPTER   II. 

The  Christian  Religion  PiiusoNALLv  realized 


673 


602 


BOOK    I. 

AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IX  RELIGION. 


CHAPTER  T. 

GOD      IN      NATURE. 

If  we  ask  ourselves  what  was  the  earhiest  impression  pro- 
duced by  the  spectacle  of  the  universe  on  the  niind  of  man, 
we  can  no  longer,  like  Milton,  imagine  him  standing  alone 
upon  the  grass  of  Eden,  and  answering  with  adoring  thoughts 
the  gaze  of  the  vaulted  sky.  The  solemn  tones  of  the  Puri- 
tan poet  give  forth  quite  another  music  from  any  that  really 
lay  at  heart  in  the  childhood  of  the  world.  Yet  it  is  admitted 
on  all  hands, — not  less  l)y  those  who  ridicule  than  by  those 
who  levere  the  tendency, — that,  to  the  eye  of  primitive 
wonder,  the  visible  scene  around  would  at  first  seem  to  be 
alive  ;  day  and  night  to  have  in  them  the  lights  and  shades 
of  thought ;  summer  and  winter  to  be  pulsations  of  a  hidden 
joy  and  grief ;  the  eager  stream  to  be  charged  with  some 
hasting  errand  ;  and  the  soft  wind  to  whisper  secrets  to  the 
forest  leaves.  This  sympathy  with  the  action  of  Nature, — 
this  ideal  interpretation  of  the  world, — which  looks  through 
the  physical  picture  of  things,  and  is  touched  by  more  tlian 
their  physical  effect,  is,  moreover,  a  specially  human  charac- 
teristic, confessedly  due,  not  to  the  endowments  which  we 
share  with  the  other  animal  races,  but  to  the  higher  gifts  of 
a  constitution  in  advance  of  theirs.  It  is,  therefore,  an 
enriching  faculty,  and  not  a  deluding  incapacity  from  which 
the  happier  brutes  are  free.  Say  what  you  will  of  the  super- 
stitions to  which  it  may  lay  us  open,  who  can  contemplate  its 

B 


2  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

primitive  manifestations  without  a  profomid,  though  it  be 
now  a  compassionate  sympathy  ?  And  when,  among  the 
prehistoric  vestiges  of  man  upon  this  earth,  we  find  ah-eady 
a  grotto  for  his  dead,*  where,  after  the  farewell  funeral  feast, 
he  shuts  them  in,  with  their  weapons  by  their  side  and  their 
provisions  for  their  journey  into  unknown  fields,  who  does  not 
feel  in  these  simple  memorials  a  pathetic  dignity  which  other 
natures  do  not  approach  ? 

In  the  apprehension,  then,  of  the  human  observer,  using 
his  most  human  faculty,  this  visible  world  is  folded  round 
and  steeped  in  a  sea  of  life,  whence  enters  all  that  rises,  and 
whither  return  the  generations  that  pass  away.  This  is 
religion  in  its  native  simplicity,  so  far  as  it  flows  in  from  the 
aspect  of  the  physical  scene  around,  and  ere  it  has  quitted  its 
indeterminate  condition  of  poetic  feeling,  to  set  into  any  of 
the  definite  forms  of  thought  which  philosophers  have  named. 
Doubtless,  it  is  an  ascription  to  Nature,  on  the  part  of  the 
observer,  of  a  life  like  his  own  :  in  the  boundless  mirror  of 
the  earth  and  sky,  he  sees,  as  the  figures  of  events  flit  by, 
the  reflected  image  of  himself.  But  for  his  living  spirit,  he 
could  not  move  ;  and  but  for  a  living  spirit,  they  could  not 
move.  Just  as  when,  standing  face  to  face  with  his  fellows, 
he  reads  the  glance  of  the  eye,  the  sudden  start,  or  the 
wringing  of  the  hands,  and  refers  them  home  to  their  source 
within  the  viewless  soul  of  another  ;  so  with  dimmer  and 
more  wondering  suspicion,  does  he  discern,  behind  the  looks 
and  movements  of  nature,  a  Mind,  that  is  the  seat  of  power 
and  the  spring  of  every  change.  You  may  laugh  at  so 
simple  a  philosophy ;  but  how  else  would  you  have  him  pro- 
ceed ?  Does  he  not,  for  this  explanation,  go  straight  to  the  only 
Cause  which  he  knows  ?  He  is  familiar  with  i^ower  in  him- 
self alone  ;  and  in  himself  it  is  Will ;  and  he  has  no  other 
element  than  will  to  be  charged  with  the  power  of  the  world. 
Is  it  said  to  be  childish  thus  to  see  his  own  life  repeated  in 
the  sphere  that  lies  around  him,  and  to  conceive  of  a  God  in 
the  image  of  humanity"?  to  project,  as  it  were,  his  own 
shadow  upon  the  space  without,  and  then  render  to  it  the 

*  At  Aurignac  in  Haute  Garonne.     See  Lyell's  Antiquity  of  Man,  ch.  s. 
pp.  192-3. 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  3 

homage  of  his  faith?*  The  ohjection  might  natm-ally 
enough  he  urged  by  a  disciple  of  Schelhng  or  Cousin,  who 
supposed  himself  able  to  transcend  his  personal  limits,  and 
take  immediate  cognizance  of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute. 
But  surely  it  comes  ill  from  those  who  have  carried  to  its 
extreme  length  the  Protagorean  maxim,  that  "man  is  the 
measure  of  all  things ;  "  who  have  laid  it  down  as  a  rule  that 
we  know  nothing  but  our  own  feelings  and  ideas ;  and  who 
have  construed  back  even  the  material  world  into  an  ideal 
reflex  of  the  order  and  permanence  of  our  sensations.! 

The  objection,  however,  is  as  little  considerate  as  it  is  con- 
sistent. For  if  we  are  to  conceive  of  mind  at  all,  elsewhere 
than  at  home,  where  are  we  to  find  the  base  of  our  concep- 
tion, the  meaning  of  the  words  we  use,  if  not  in  our  own 
mental  consciousness?  Not  in  religion  only,  but  in  every 
sphere  of  understanding,  self-knowledge  is  the  condition  and 
the  limit  of  other  knowledge ;  and  if  there  were  laws  of 
intellect,  or  affections  of  goodness,  other  than  our  own,  they 
must  remain  forever  foreign  to  our  apprehension,  and 
could  be  no  objects  of  intelligent  speech.  Be  it  an  order  of 
thought  of  which  we  see  traces  beyond  us,  or  a  purpose  of 
righteousness,  or  an  expression  of  power,  we  have  no  means 
of  imagining  it  at  all,  except  as  homogeneous  with  our  own. 
Either,  therefore,  the  very  structure  of  our  highest  faculties 
is  unsound,  and  the  constitution  of  our  reason  itself  con- 
demns us  to  unreason  ;  or  else  the  likeness  we  see  between 
the  world  within  and  the  world  without,  in  its  idea  and  its 
causality,  reports  a  real  correspondence,  the  answering  face 
of  the  Divine  and  the  human,  communing  through  the 
glorious  symbolism  between. 

It  is,  at  all  events,  acknowledged  as  a  fact,  that  this 
religious  interpretation  of  the  world  is  natural  to  man,  and 
therefore  holds  him,  till  it  is  dispossessed  by  some  superior 
claimant,  with  a  certain  right  of  pre-occupation.  Next,  it 
must  also  be  admitted,  that,  simply  as  an  hypothesis,  it  is 
adequate  to  its  purpose;  i.e.,  that,  if  tried  through  the 
whole  range  of  the  phenomena,  it  provides  a  sufficient  cause 

*  Mill's  Logic,  book  iii.  ch.  v.  8,  9. 

t  Mill's  Examination  of  Hainiltou,  ch.  ii.  xi.     Grote's  Plato,  ch.  xxvi. 

B    2 


4  A  UTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  l. 

for  all.  It  may  be  open  to  an  objector  to  say  that  an  infinite 
Divine  Will,  eternally  acting  through  the  universe,  is  more 
than  we  want,  to  give  account  of  what  we  find ;  but  he  can- 
not say,  that  it  is  less.  It  supplies  an  inexhaustible  fund  of 
causality,  equal  to  every  exigency,  and  incapable  of  being 
thrown  upon  engagements  which  it  cannot  meet.  It  is  only 
when  you  add  on  to  it  superfluous  explanations  of  your  own  ; 
when  you  affect  to  know,  not  only  the  power  wherein,  but 
also  the  reason  why  ;  when  you  presume  to  read  the  particu- 
lar motives  whence  this  or  that  has  sprung  ;  when  you  charge 
the  lightning  flash  with  vengeance,  or  treat  a  blighted  harvest 
as  a  judgment  upon  sin ;  when  you  discuss  the  course  of  a 
comet,  or  a  trembling  equilibrium  of  the  planets,  as  a  pre- 
paration for  the  judgment  day ;  when,  in  short,  you  fill  the 
fields  of  space  with  the  fictions  of  your  spiritual  geography, 
and  pledge  them,  without  leave,  to  act  out  the  situations  of 
your  drama,  that  you  are  sure  to  be  brought  to  shame,  and 
turned  into  the  outer  darkness  prepared  for  the  astrologers. 
But  keep  to  the  modesty  of  simple  religious  faith,  which, 
however  sure  of  the  ground  and  essence  of  things,  knows 
nothing  of  the  phenomena,  and  lets  science  sort  them  as  it 
will ;  say  humbly,  "  How  this  and  that  may  be,  I  cannot  tell, 
nor  am  I  in  the  secret  why  it  is  not  other  ;  I  only  Imow  it  is 
from  Him  who  shines  in  the  whole  and  hides  in  the  parts  ;  " 
and,  stand  where  you  may  in  time  or  place,  you  hold  the  key 
of  an  eternal  temple,  on  which  none  can  put  a  lock  you  can- 
not open. 

If,  then,  the  recognition  of  divine  causality  is  admitted  to 
be  primary  and  natural  to  man,  to  be  dictated  by  just  the 
faculties  that  lift  him  above  other  tribes,  and  to  be  adequate 
to  the  whole  field  it  proposes  to  embrace,  how  is  it  that  in 
many  a  mind  it  is  weakened  by  the  spirit  of  modern  know- 
ledo-e,  and  meets  there  with  beliefs  and  tastes  which  seem  to 
be  ill  at  ease  with  it,  and  liy  supercilious  looks  to  take  repose 
and  courage  out  of  it  ?  Has  anything  really  been  found  out 
to  disprove  it?  Has  any  chamber  been  opened  and  found 
empty,  where  it  was  thought  God  was  sure  to  be  ?  Has  any 
analysis  reached  the  hiding-place  of  his  power,  and  entered 
its  factors  on  the  list  of   chemical  equivalents  ?      Has  any 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  5 

geologist  succeeded,  not  only  in  laying  out  the  order  of  phe- 
nomena into  well-reasoned  succession,  but  in  passing  behind 
phenomena  altogether,  so  as  to  attest  a  vacuity  in  the  sphere 
of  real  being ;  and,  after  his  long  retreat  through  the  ages, 
has  he  slipped  out  at  the  back  door  of  time,  right  into  the 
eternal,  and  brought  word  that  there  is  no  Mind  there  ?  Let 
us  calmly  review,  one  by  one,  the  characteristic  achievements 
and  auguries  of  recent  science,  so  far  as  they  are  supposed  to 
affect  religious  conceptions,  and  estimate  what  they  have 
done  to  disturb  the  theistic  interpretation  of  the  world. 

The  first  grand  discovery  of  modern  times  is  the  immense 
extension  of  the  universe  in  si)acc.  Compared  with  the  fields 
from  which  our  stars  fling  us  their  light,  the  Cosmos  of  the 
ancient  world  was  but  as  a  cabinet  of  brilliants,  or  rather  a 
little  jewelled  cup  found  in  the  ocean  or  the  wilderness.  Won- 
derful as  were  the  achievements,  and  sagacious  as  were  the 
guesses,  of  the  Greek  astronomers,  they  little  suspected  what 
they  were  registering  when  they  drew  up  their  catalogues  of 
stars  :  skilfully  as  they  often  read  the  relative  motions  and 
positions  of  the  wandering  lights  of  heaven,  so  as  to  compute 
and  predict  the  eclipse,  their  line  of  measurement  fell  short 
even  of  this  first  solar  chamber  of  nature ;  and,  for  want  of  the 
telescope,  their  speculative  imagination  soon  lost  itself  in 
childish  fancies  beyond.  The  concentric  crystal  spheres,  the 
adamantine  axis  turning  in  the  lap  of  Necessity,  the  bands  that 
held  the  heaven  together  like  a  girth  that  clasps  a  ship,  the 
shaft  which  led  from  earth  to  sky,  and  which  was  paced  by  the 
soul  in  a  thousand  years,  except  when  the  time  was  come  for 
her  to  be  snatched,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  to  the  mortal 
birth, — these  things,  presented  in  one  of  the  most  solemn  and 
high-wrought  passages  of  ancient  literature,*  give  us  the 
standard  of  the  Greek  cosmical  conception  hi  its  sublimest 
dreams.  That  Plato  should  deem  that  fair  but  miniature 
structure  not  too  great  for  some  sort  of  personal  management ; 
that  he  should  provide  a  soul  to  fill  it,  ever-living  and  self- 
sufficing,  thhiking  out  its  order,  and  gleaming  through  all  its 
beauty,  and  making  it  an  image  of  eternal  good, — this,  it  is 
said,  is  not  wonderful  ;  the  theory  was  not  wholly  dispropor- 
"  Plato,  de  Republ.,  X.,  G14  C-G21  B. 


6  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED    IN  RELIGION.  Book  I. 

tioned  to  the  scale  of  the  phenomenon.  But  what  has  now 
become  of  that  night-canopy  of  his,  and  all  that  it  contained  ? 
It  has  shrunk  into  a  toy ;  and  with  it,  we  are  told,  its  doctrine 
must  go  too.  That  which  he  deemed  a  millennial  journey  for 
a  human  traveller  has  been  measured  for  us  by  a  messenger 
swifter  than  the  flash  of  Plato's  thought, — a  messenger  that 
could  run  round  the  earth  eight  times  in  a  second.*  What 
would  the  philosopher  have  said,  had  he  known  that  the  beams 
flung  from  the  pole-star  when,  as  a  youth  of  thirty,  he  was 
detained  in  his  sick  room  from  the  last  hours  of  Socrates,  could 
only  just  reach  his  own  eye,f  when,  at  fourscore,  he  was  about 
to  close  it  in  death  ?  As  for  the  paler  rays  of  the  milky- way 
which  he  describes,  many  a  one  that  started  in  the  hour  when 
Plato  was  born,  we  are  too  soon  to  see ;  for  they  are  not  yet 
half-way.  Is  this  stupendous  scene,  we  are  asked,  inhabited 
and  wielded  by  One  Sole  Will  ?  Can  w^e  stretch  the  conception 
of  personality,  till  it  is  commensurate  with  the  dimensions  of 
such  a  world  ?  Must  not  the  problem  be  flung  in  despair  into 
the  shadows  of  fate,  to  be  scrambled  for  by  the  rude  and  name- 
less forces  which  can  do  we  know  not  what  ? 

To  this  vague  apprehension,  which  seems  to  oppress  many 
minds,  thus  much  must  be  conceded  :  that  a  compact  little 
universe,  every  part  of  which  our  thought  can  visit  with  easy 
excursions,  and  which  can  lie  within  our  conception  as  a  whole, 
is  better  fitted  to  the  scale  of  our  capacities,  and  less  strains 
the  efforts  of  religious  imagination,  than  the  bafPnng  infinitude 
which  has  burst  open  before  us.  But  ease  of  fancy  is  no  test 
of  truth  ;  and  the  mere  inability  of  panting  thought  to  over- 
take the  opening  way  is  no  reason  for  retracing  the  steps  already 
made.  To  let  our  own  incapacity  cast  its  negative  shadow  on 
the  universe,  and  blot  out  the  divineness  because  it  is  too  great, 
is  a  mere  wild  and  puerile  waywardness.  How  does  the  size 
of  things  affect  their  relation  to  a  Cause  already  infinite  ?  The 
miniature  Cosmos  which  we  owned  to  be  divine  is  still  there, 
with  all  its  beauty  and  its  good,  only  embosomed  in  far- 
stretching  fields  of  similar  beauty  and  repeated  good.  It  is 
not  pretended  that  the  vast  quantities  with  which  we  deal  in- 

*  The  speed  of  light  equals  192,000  miles  per  second. 
+  Plat.,  Phaedo,  59  B. 


Chap.  I.]  GOD   IN  NA  TURK.  7 

troduce  us  to  a  different  qnalitij  of  things ;  that  they  take  us 
into  lawless  regions,  and  turn  us  out  from  a  Cosmos  into  a 
chaos.     On  the  contrary,  the  same  simple  but  sublime  physical 
geometry  which  interprets  the  j)ath  of  the  projectile,  the  phases 
of  Venus,  and  the  sweep  of  the  comet  which  has  no  return,  is 
still  available  in  the  most  distant  heavens  to  which  the  tele- 
scope can  pierce  ;  and  the  star-traced  diagrams  of  remotest 
space  are  embodied  reasonings  of  the  same  science  which  works 
its  problems  on  the  black  board  of  every  school.    Nay,  the  very 
light  that  brings  us  report  from  that  inconceivable  abyss  is  as 
a  filament  that  binds  into  one  system  the  extremes  of  the 
Cosmos  there  and  here  ;  for,  when  it  reaches  the  telescope,  it 
is  reflected  by  the  same  law  as  the  beams  of  tliis  morning's 
sun  ;  the  prism  breaks  it  into  the  same  colours,  and  bends 
them  in  the  same  degrees.     So  confident  do  we  feel  that  there 
is  not  one  truth  here  and  another  there,  that  no  sooner  does  a 
luminous  ray  out  of  the  sky  reproduce  in  its  spectrum  the  same 
adjustment    of  lines   and   colours    which    our    incandescent 
chemicals  have  been  made  to  paint  upon  the  wall,  than  we 
pronounce  at  once  upon  the  materials  supplying  the  solar  and 
stellar  fires.     Nor  do  the  nebuliB,  composed  of  gaseous  matter 
of  various  density,  with  brilliant  nucleus  and  fainter  margin, 
leave  it  doubtful  that  the  laws  of  heat  and  expansion,  which 
have  been  ascertained  by  us  here,  carry  their  formulas  into 
those  vast  depths.     It  is  plain,  therefore,  that,  in  being  thrust 
out  beyond  the  ancient  bounds,  we  are  not  driven  as  exiles 
into  a  trackless  wilderness,  where  that  which  we  had  owned  to 
be  divine  is  exchanged  for  the  undivine ;  the  clew,  familiar  to 
our  hand,  lengthens  as  we  go,  and  never  breaks  ;  and,  with 
whatever  shudder  Imagination  may  look  round,  Eeason  can 
find  its  way  hither  and  tliither  precisely  as  before.     ^Vhat, 
indeed,  have  we  found,  by  moving  out  along  all  radii  into  the 
infinite?  that  the  whole  is  woven  together  in  one  sublime 
tissue  of  intellectual  relations,  geometrical  and  physical,  the 
realized  original  of  whicli  all  our  science  does  but  partially 
copy.     That  science  is  the  crowning  product  and  supreme  ex- 
pression of  human  reason ;  what,  then,  is  the  organism  which 
it  interprets,  and  renders  visil)le  on  the  reduced   scale  of  our 
understanding  ?     Can  the  photograph  exhibit  the  symmetry  of 


8  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.  [Book  I. 

beauty  and  the  expressive  lines  of  thought,  if  no  mind  speaks 
through  the  original  ?  Can  the  dead  looks  of  matter  and  force 
fling  upon  the  plate  the  portrait,  alive  with  genius,  and  serene 
with  intellect  ?  Unless,  therefore,  it  takes  more  mental  faculty 
to  construe  a  universe  than  to  cause  it,  to  read  the  book  of 
nature  than  to  write  it,  we  must  more  than  ever  look  upon  its 
solemn  face  as  the  living  appeal  of  thought  to  thought,  the 
medium  through  which  the  eye  of  the  Infinite  Eeason  gazes 
into  ours,  and  wakes  it  to  meet  him  on  the  way.  The  Cosmos- 
tracks  all  have  the  same  termini ;  and  whoever  moves  upon 
them  passes  from  mind  to  mind  ;  God,  thinking  out  his  eternal 
thoughts  on  lines  that  descend  to  us,  from  cause  to  law,  from 
law  to  fact,  from  fact  to  sense  ;  and  we,  counting  our  way  back 
with  labouring  steps,  from  what  we  feel  to  what  we  see,  and 
from  what  is  to  what  must  be,  till  we  meet  him  m  the  eternal 
fields,  where  all  minds  live  on  the  same  aliment  of  the  ever 
true  and  ever  good. 

Wliether,  in  the  movements  of  reason,  he  descends  to  us, 
or  we  ascend  to  him,  it  is  by  the  path  of  law  which  stretches 
across  the  spaces  of  the  world,  and  which  is  in  one  direction 
the  wayfarer's  track,  and  in  the  other  the  highway  for  our 
God.  Is  it  not  childish,  then,  to  be  terrified  out  of  our  reli- 
gion by  the  mere  scale  of  thmgs,  and,  because  the  little 
Mosaic  firmament  is  broken  in  pieces,  to  ask  whether  its 
divine  Euler  is  not  also  gone  ?  Do  you  fear,  because  the 
earth  has  dwindled  to  a  sand-grain  ?  So  much  the  more 
glorious  is  the  field  in  which  it  lies  ;  so  much  the  more 
numerous  the  sentinels  of  eternal  equilibrium,  the  brilliant 
witnesses  of  order,  rank  upon  rank,  that  pass  always  the  same 
word,  "  There  is  no  chaos  here."  Do  you  pretend  that  the 
dimensions  are  beyond  the  compass  of  a  personal  and  living 
Mind  ?  How,  then,  has  your  own  mind,  as  learner,  managed 
to  measure  and  to  know  it,  at  least  enough  to  think  it  some- 
thing beyond  thought  ?  Cannot  the  Creative  Intellect  occupy 
and  dispose  beforehand  any  scene  of  which  your  science  can 
take  possession  afterwards  ?  And  if  it  is  too  much  for  the 
resources  of  mind, — which,  at  any  rate,  is  supreme  among 
the  things  we  know, — how  can  it  fail  to  be,  in  higher 
measure,  beyond  the  grasp  of  anything  else  ?     Does  the  order 


Chap.  I.l  GOD  IN  NATURE.  9 

of  one  solar  sj^stem  tell  us  that  we  are  in  the  domain  of 
intelligence,  but  the  balance  and  harmony  of  ten  tliousand 
cancel  the  security,  and  hand  us  over  to  blind  material  force  ? 
Shall  a  single  canto  from  the  epic  of  the  world  breathe  the 
tones  of  a  genius  divine  ;  j^et  the  sequel,  which  clears  the 
meaning  and  multiplies  the  beauty,  take  from  the  poem  it?: 
inspiration  cf  thought,  and  reduce  it  to  a  mechanical  crystal- 
lization of  words  ?  Does  reason  turn  into  unreason,  as  it 
fills  auguster  fields,  and  nears  the  Infinite  ?  Such  a  fear  is 
self-convicted,  and  cannot  shape  itself  into  consistent  speech  : 
it  is  the  mere  panic  of  incompetent  imagination,  which  the 
steadfast  heart  will  tranquillize,  and  the  large  mind  transcend. 
We  are  not  lost,  then,  in  our  modern  immensity  of  space ; 
but  may  still  rest,  with  the  wise  of  every  age,  in  the  faith  that 
a  realm  of  intellectual  order  and  purest  purpose  environs  us, 
and  that  the  unity  of  nature  is  but  the  unit}'  of  the  all-perfect 
Will. 

The  second  great  discovery  of  modern  science  is  the 
immense  extension  of  the  universe  in  time.  This  also  dis- 
turbs the  hearts  of  men,  by  the  dissolving  of  many  a  vener- 
able dream,  and  forces  on  them  unwonted  and  unwelcome 
conceptions,  the  significance  of  which  we  nmst  try  to  esti- 
mate. 

If  for  this  purpose  we  deign  to  consult  the  witness  of  his- 
tory, and  listen  to  other  men's  thought  ere  we  venture  to  work 
out  our  own,  we  encounter  at  once  a  singular  rebuke  to  the 
precipitancy  of  theologic  fear.  As  if  to  evince  the  persever- 
ance of  religious  faitli,  and  its  ready  adaptation  to  the  intel- 
lectual varieties  of  mankind,  a  conspicuous  proof  presents 
itself  on  this  very  field,  that  one  age  may  consecrate  a  belief 
which  to  another  may  appear  simply  impious.  The  imagina- 
tion of  Christendom  has  selected  and  drawn  out  from 
eternity  two  limiting  epochs  as  supremely  sacred, — the  crea- 
tion and  the  dissolution  of  the  world.  These  two — the 
opening  scene  of  the  divine  drama  of  all  things,  and  its 
catastrophe — have  enclosed  for  us  the  whole  tcnr.  Jirina  of 
humanity,  nay,  of  physical  nature  itself,  between  opposite 
seas  of  awe  and  mystery.  All  the  beauty  and  horror,  the 
tenderness  and  wrath,  the  pity  and  hope,  which   ijiety  can 


lo  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

wring  from  the  soul  of  genius,  have  heen  shed  upon  these 
moments,  to  make  them  real  by  their  intensity.  The  imagery 
of  ancient  hymns — the  "  Lucis  Creator  Optime,"  and  the 
"Dies  irse,  dies  ilia  ;  "  the  masterpieces  of  art  in  the  cathe- 
drals of  cities,  and  still  more,  perhaps,  the  plebeian  pictures 
by  the  road-side  oratory  ;  the  majestic  epics  of  Dante  and 
Milton  ;  the  glorious  music  with  which  Haydn  ushers  in  the 
light  of  the  first  day,  and  Spohr  draws  down  the  shadows  of 
the  last, — have  deeply  fixed  those  supernatural  boundaries  in 
the  fancy  and  feeling  of  Christendom.  Yet  these  very  con- 
ceptions, that  the  universe  had  come  into  existence,  and  that 
it  would  pass  out  of  it,  are  pronounced  by  Aristotle  totally 
inadmissible,  as  at  variance  with  the  divine  perfection  ;*  and 
so  strong  was  the  reverent  feeling  of  the  ancient  philosophy 
against  them,  that  even  Philo  the  Jew,  in  the  face  of  his  own 
Scriptures,  was  carried  away  by  it,  and  wrote  a  special  treatise 
to  prove  the  indestructibility  of  the  world.  Far  from  begin- 
ning with  a  genesis  and  ending  with  a  destruction  of  the 
heavens  and  the  earth,  both  of  them  sudden  alike,  the  Greek 
philosophical  piety  shrank  distressed  from  paroxysms  of 
change,  and  never  felt  itself  in  the  Divine  Presence  except 
where  the  evolution  was  smooth  and  the  order  eternal,  f  The 
more  it  retired  from  phenomena  to  their  ground,  and,  while 
among  phenomena,  the  more  it  dwelt  with  regular  recurrences 
which  might  go  on  forever,  the  nearer  did  it  believe  itself  to 
the  Supreme  Mind.  Its  favourite  symbols  and  abodes  of  the 
godlike  were  not  the  earthquake,  and  the  smoking  mountain, 
with  its  "  blackness  and  darkness  and  tempest  and  voice  of  a 
trumpet  and  sound  of  words ;  "  but  the  sphere,  most  perfect 
of  forms,  because  like  itself  all  round  ;  and  the  rotatory  move- 
ment of  the  fixed  stars,  because  self-sufficing  and  complete, 
without  the  varying  speed  and  even  reversed  direction  of  the 
less  sacred  planetary  lights ;  and  the  symmetry  of  propor- 
tionate numbers,  and  the  rhythm  of  music,  and  the  secure 
steps  of  geometrical  deduction ;  whatever  is  serene  and 
balanced  and  changeless,  and  seems  to  ask  least  from  causes 

*  Aristot.,  de    CojIo,    I.    3,   II.  1.     ]\Iet.  xi.  1074,   a.  b.      Conf.   Philo,  de 
Incorruptibilitate  Mundi,  3. 

•)  GeoC  Sc  eVepyeia  aQavafrm.  tovto  8'  earl  ^om)  cndios.     Aristot.,  de  CceIo,  II.  3. 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  1 1 

beyond  itself, — is  the  chosen  retreat  of  jhe  Hellenic  type  of 
devout  contemplation.  The  peculiarity  has  its  origin  in  this, 
that  while  the  Hebrew  traced  the  footsteps  of  God  in  time 
and  history,  the  Greek  looked  round  for  him  in  space  and  its 
cosmic  order :  so  that  the  one  met  the  sacred  fire  flashing  and 
fading  in  the  free  movements  of  humanity,  the  other  saw  it 
fixed  in  the  unwasting  light  of  the  eternal  stars. 

It  would  seem  possible,  then,  for  the  universe  still  to  remain 
the  abode  of  God,  even  though  it  should  never,  as  a  whole, 
have  come  into  existence,  but  should  have  been  always  there ; 
and  that  actually,  under  this  very  aspect,  it  has  put  on  its 
divinest  look  to  some  of  the  greatest  intellects  of  the  human 
race.  This  may  well  re-assure  us  if,  for  the  doctrine  of 
absolute  creation,  we  are  called  to  substitute  entirely  new 
conceptions  of  the  genesis  of  things.  A  century  ago,  all  the 
lines  of  research  which  pushed  their  exploration  into  the  past 
bound  themselves  to  meet  at  a  starting-point  about  six 
thousand  j^ears  away.  Intent  upon  this  convergence,  they 
virtually  predetermined  their  own  track  in  conformity  with  it. 
One  after  another,  as  they  followed  the  trail  of  their  own 
facts,  they  found  that  they  were  likely  to  overshoot  their 
rendezvous,  and  must  either  twist  the  indications  of  direction 
from  their  natural  sweep,  or  else  demand  a  longer  run.  Even 
for  the  mere  human  phenomena,  the  allowance  of  history  was 
evidently  too  small.  Along  the  great  rivers,  which  were  the 
earliest  seats  of  civilization,  were  found  memorials  of  ancient 
dynasties  which  could  not  be  compressed  within  so  narrow  a 
chronology.  Eemains  of  art,  disinterred  from  surprising 
depths,  beneath  annual  sand-drifts  and  fluviatile  deposits, 
measured  themselves  back  thousands  of  years  too  far.  The 
genealogy  and  rate  of  change  in  languages  asked  for  more 
room  to  work.  And  the  races  of  mankind,  especially  if  they 
were  to  claim  a  common  ancestry,  could  not  make  out  their 
family  tree,  unless  it  were  a  more  venerable  stock,  with 
roots  in  the  soil  of  an  older  world.  Meanwhile,  the  naturalist* 
hitherto  content  to  classify  and  describe  the  forms  of  life  now 
upon  the  earth  and  in  the  waters,  was  introduced  by  his 
brother,  who  had  been  taking  notes  among  the  rocks,  to  an 
entirely  new  realm  of  plants  and  animals, — a  realm  which 


12  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

compelled  liirn  to  arrange  its  kinds  by  a  rule  of  succession, 
one  after  its  forerunner,  as  well  as  by  a  rule  of  analogy,  one 
like  its  neighbour ;  and  hardly  had  organic  nature,  instead  of 
remaining  a  mere  picture  of  what  is,  become  also  a  history  of 
what  has  been,  than,  even  before  any  attempt  at  measuring 
the  intervals,  the  beads  of  the  chain  declared  themselves  in 
numbers  far  too  great  for  the  thread  on  which  they  were  to 
hang.  A  less  indefinite  reckoning,  however,  was  not  far  off. 
The  geologist,  by  patient  and  irresistible  induction,  established 
a  series  of  sedimentary  rocks  ;  and  showed  that  the  crust  of 
the  earth,  to  a  depth  far  exceeding  the  measure  of  our  highest 
mountain-chains,  has  been  formed  and  re-formed  ;  its  conti- 
nents depressed  and  elevated,  its  valleys  scooped  out,  its  sea- 
lines  changed ;  nay,  even  its  oceans  filled,  its  climates  turned 
from  tropical  to  glacial,  by  the  agencies  which  are  at  work 
around  us  now,  but  which  are  so  slow  that  a  single  generation 
can  scarcely  see  them  stir.  Within  the  millions  of  years 
which  are  thus  gained,  the  physiologist  finds  scope  to  move, 
and  thinks  better  of  the  small  causes  of  change  at  his  com- 
mand, for  deriving  kind  from  kind,  and  bridgmg  the  chasms 
which  seem  to  keep  the  families  of  creatures  distmct.  And 
he  suggests  a  law,  gathered  from  the  art  of  man  in  modifying 
plants  and  animals,  and  legiljle  enough  in  many  natural 
samples,  at  the  touch  of  which  the  barriers  between  species 
give  way ;  the  separating  intervals  become  derivative ;  and  a 
provisional  character  is  assumed  by  even  the  broadest  dis- 
tinctions, not  excepting  (some  will  tell  us)  that  which  parts 
the  organic  from  the  inorganic  world.  To  complete  this  con- 
version of  the  Cosmos  born  in  a  week,  into  a  growth  through 
immeasurable  ages,  enters  the  hypothesis,  that  the  whole 
Bolar  system  was  once  an  incandescent  nebulous  mass,  whose 
rotation,  as  it  cools,  has  flung  off  in  succession  its  outer  rings, 
and  left  them  to  condense  in  their  orbits  into  the  planetary 
spheres ;  each,  in  its  turn,  to  solidify  round  its  molten  centre 
into  a  habitable  world,  till  the  sun  alone  retains  its  self- 
luminous  glow.  There  is  nothing  to  hmder  speculative  science 
from  pushing  the  same  analogies  into  the  remotest  stellar 
fields ;  and  the  resulting  picture  would  be,  of  an  eternal 
Cosmogony,  by  uninterrupted   development,  with   no    starts 


Chap.  I.J       .  GOD  IN  NATURE.  13 

from  nonentity  into  existence,  no  leap  from  stage  to  stage 
of  being,  but  Avith  perpetuity  of  the  same  methods  and  the 
same  rates  of  evohition  which  have  their  play  around  us 
now. 

For  our  present  purpose  it  is  superfluous  to  draw  any  line 
between  what  is  established  certainty,  and  what  is  conjectural 
vaticination  in  this  picture.  Suppose  it  to  be  all  true  ;  and 
consider  what  difference  it  makes  to  our  religious  conceptions. 
The  essence  of  the  difference  between  the  older  and  the  newer 
doctrine  lies  in  this :  that  the  causality  which  the  former  con- 
centrates, the  latter  distributes ;  the  fiat  of  a  moment  bursts 
open,  and  spreads  itself  along  the  path  of  perpetuit.y.  Which- 
ever way  it  acts,  it  is  plain  that  the  sum  of  its  work  is  still 
the  same,  and  demands  neither  more  nor  less  in  the  one  case 
than  in  the  other.  The  element  of  time  is  totally  indifferent 
to  the  character  of  the  products  it  turns  up  ;  and  it  takes  as 
much  power  to  grow  a  tree  in  a  century  as  to  create  it  in  a 
night.  Neither  the  magnitude  nor  the  quality  of  the  universe 
is  altered  by  the  discovery  how  old  it  is :  whatever  beauty, 
whatever  intellectual  relations,  whatever  good,  gleamed  from 
it  and  reported  its  divine  inhabitant  to  those  who  deemed  it  a 
thing  of  yesterday,  are  still  there,  only  with  glory  more  pro- 
longed, for  us  who  know  it  to  be  a  less  recent  and  a  less 
perishable  thing.  It  is  not  degraded  by  having  lasted  so  long, 
that  we  should  set  it  down  to  a  meaner  source ;  it  is  not 
dwindled  or  reduced,  that  we  should  give  it  to  a  minor  power. 
We  want,  in  order  to  render  account  of  it,  precisely  what  was 
wanted  before  ;  and  the  only  change  is  not  in  the  cause,  but 
in  the  date  and  manner  of  the  effects  ;  in  the  substitution,  for 
fits  and  paroxysms  of  volition,  of  the  perennial  fiowof  thought 
along  the  path  of  law, — a  method  which  surely  more  accords 
with  the  serenity  of  perfect  INIind.  So  long  as  we  arrive  at 
last  at  the  symmetry,  the  balance,  the  happy  adaptations,  of 
the  higher  organisms, — at  the  constitution  of  the  eye  for 
vision,  and  the  hand  for  a  designer's  work,  and  the  instincts 
that  move  blindly  into  partnership  of  harmony, — there  is  not 
less  to  admire  and  esteem  divin(\  for  its  having  been  forever 
growing  richer  and  grander,  and  so  having  been  long  upon 
the  way.     If  you  suppose  that  the  less  can  produce  the  greater, 


14  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

you  leave  the  excess  of  the  latter  above  the  former  without  a 
cause  ;  if  you  admit  that  it  cannot,  then,  whatever  you  would 
require  as  adequate  to  the  last  term  must  already  be  present 
in  the  first.     This  brings   me   to   notice   a  singular  logical 
illusion  which  seems  to  haunt  the  expounders  of  the  modern 
doctrine  of  natural  development.     They  apparently  assume 
that  growtJt,  dispenses  with  causation  ;  so  that  if  they  can  only 
set  something  growing,  they  may  begin  upon  the  edge  of  zero, 
and,  by  simply  giving  it  time,  find  it  on  their  return  a  universe 
complete.     Grant  them  only  some  tiniest  cellule  to  hold  a 
force  not  worth  mentioning  ;  grant  them,  further,  a  tendency 
in  this  one  to  become  tiro,  and  to  improve  its  habits  a  little  as 
it  goes, — and,   in  an  infinite  series,  there  is  no  limit  to  the 
magnitude  and  splendour  of  the  terms  they  will  turn  out. 
By  brooding  long  enough  on  an  egg  that  is  next  to  nothing, 
they  can,  in  this  way,  hatch  any  universe,  actual  or  possible. 
Is  it  not  evident  that  this  is  a  mere  trick  of  imagination,  con- 
cealing its  thefts  of  causation  by  committing  them  little  by 
little,  and  taking  the  heap  from  the  divine  storehouse  grain 
by  grain  ?    You  draw  upon  the  fund  of  infinite  resource  to 
just  the  same  amount,  whether  you  call  for  it  all  at  a  stroke, 
or  sow  it  sparse,  as  an  invisible  gold-dust,  along  the  mountain- 
range  of  ages.     Handle  the  terms  as  you  may,  you  cannot 
make  an  equation  with  an  infinitesimal  on  one  side,  and  an 
infinite  upon  the  other,   though  you  spread  an  eternity  be- 
tween.  You  are  asking,  in  fact,  for  something  other  than  time ; 
since  this,  of  itself,  can  never  do  more  than  hand  on  what 
there  is  from  point  to  point,  and  can  ))y  no  means  help  the 
lower  to  create  the  higher.     Time  is  of  no  use  to  your  doctrine, 
except  to  thin  and  hide  the  little  increments  of  adapting  and 
improving  power  which  you  purloin.     Mental  causation  is  not, 
then,  reduced  to  physical  by  diluting  it  with  duration  ;  and  if 
you  show  me  ever  so  trivial  a  seed,  from  which  have  come, 
you  say,  the  teeming  world,  and  the  embracing  heavens,  and 
the  soul  of  man  which  interprets  them  in  thought,  my  infer- 
ence will  be,  not  that  they  have  no  more  divineness  than  that 
rudimentary  tissue,  but  tliat  it  had  no  less  divineness  than 
they  have  spread  abroad. 

It  is  a  common  feature  of  every  doctrine  of  development  in 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  15 

time,  that  the  course  has  been  from  ruder  elements  to  more 
refined  combinations,  from  comparative  chaos  to  the  Cosmos 
we  behold.     That  a  solar  system  should  succeed  to  a  cloud  on 
fire ;  that  a  red-hot  earth  should  put  on  a  decent  crust,  and 
get  the  waters  into  its  hollows,  and  the  residuary  atmosphere 
cool  and  pure  ;  that  the  history  of  its  life  should  begin  with  the 
lichens,  the  mosses  and  the  ferns,  and  should  reach  to  man, — 
constitutes  a  clear  progression,  and  compels  us  to  report,  of 
our  portion  of  the  universe,  that  it  is  forever  looking  up.     If 
this  discovery  had  been  opened  to  Plato  and  Aristotle,  would 
it  have  added  to  their  religion,  or  subtracted  from  it  ?     "Which 
terminus  of  the  progression  would  their  thought  have  seized, 
as  the  seat  of  the  new  light  ?     Assuredly  on  the  latest  point 
of  the  ascent.     As  it  was  not  in  the  raw  material,  Init  in  the 
realized  order  of  the  world,  that  they  read  the  expression  of 
divine  reason,  as  the  end  in  view  can  only  come  out  at  the 
last,  thither  it  is  that  the  eye  of  their  philosophy  would  have 
turned  ;  and  they  would  have  accepted  the  law  of  progression 
as  enhancing  the  sacredness  of  the  great  whole,  as  intimating 
ideal  ends  beyond  what  they  had  found,  as  the  sign  of  even 
more  and  better  thought  at  the  heart  of  things  than  they 
had  dared  to  dream.     "Did  we  not  say,"   they  would  have 
asked,  "  that   this  Cosmos  was  full  of  Mind,  shaping  it  to 
such  beauty  as  was  possible,  and  directing  it  to   the  best 
attainable    ends '?     And    see    here    the    very    pressure    and 
movement  of  this  inner  mind ;  for  the  beauty  rises  in  glory, 
and  the  ends  are  stepping  on  to  more  perfection."     Xo  one, 
probal)Iy,  who  is  familiar  with  their  modes  of  reasoning,  will 
douljt  that  this  is  the  kind  of  impression  which  would  have 
been  made  upon  those  philosophers  by  the  modern  law  of 
progression.     But  how  do  its  popular  expounders  deal  with 
it  ?     By  a  singular  inversion  of  attention  and  interest,  they 
fix  their  eye  on  the  other  end  of  the  succession,  tlie  crude 
fermentation  of  the  earth's  seething  mass,  and  virtually  say, 
*'  You   think  yourself  the  child  of  God  ;  come  and  see  the 
slime  of  which  you  are  the  spawn."     Need  I  insist  that  the 
antithesis   is  as  false  as  the  insinuated  inference  is  mean, 
inasmuch  as  no  secondary  causation  excludes  the  primary, 


l6  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

but  only  traces  its  method  and  order  ?  It  is  quite  right  to 
complete,  if  you  can,  your  natural  history  from  first  to  last. 
But  if  you  would  estimate  the  type  or  project  of  a  growing 
nature,  with  a  view  to  see  whether  it  carries  anything  which 
you  can  suppose  to  be  divine,  is  it  the  more  reasonable  to 
look  at  the  stuff  it  is  made  of,  or  at  the  perfection  it  attains 
to  ?  If  it  xvere  the  work  of  God,  which  of  these  two  would 
bear  the  stamp  of  his  intent  ?  There  is  no  wonder  thai,  you 
miss  the  end  in  view,  if  you  will  look  only  at  the  beginning  ; 
and  that  the  intellectual  character  of  the  finished  product  is 
not  apparent  in  the  lower  workshops  of  Nature,  where  its 
constituents  are  mixed.  As  well  might  you  expect  to  find  the 
genius  of  a  poem  in  the  vessel  where  the  pulp  of  its  paper  is 
prepared.  Causation  must  be  measured  by  its  supreme  and 
perfect  effects ;  and  it  is  a  philosophical  ingratitude  to 
construe  the  glorious  outburst  to  which  its  crescendo  mounts 
by  the  faint  beginnings  of  its  scale. 

Would  you  think  the  aspect  of  things  to  be  more  divine  if 
the  law  were  reversed,  and  creation  slipped  downwards  on  a 
course  of  perpetual  declension?  Would  you  turn  your 
present  conclusion  round,  and  say,  "  See  how  the  higher 
creates  the  lower,  and  all  must  begin  from  God  "  ?  on  the 
contrary,  you  would  justly  take  alarm,  and  cry,  "  There  is  no 
heavenly  government  here  ;  the  tendency  is  through  perpetual 
loss  to  chaos  in  the  end ;  and,  if  there  were  ever  an  idea 
within  the  aggregate  of  things,  it  is  a  baffled  thought, 
impotent  to  stop  confusion."  Nowhere,  surely,  would  atheism 
be  more  excused  than  in  a  world  that  runs  to  ruin.  Would 
you,  then,  prefer,  so  far  as  piety  is  concerned,  that  the 
universe  should  be  a  system  of  stationary  good,  either 
without  a  tide  at  all  in  its  afi'airs,  or  with  periodic  ebb  and 
flow,  rising  forever  with  a  flood  of  promise,  and  forever 
sinking  with  disappointing  retreat '?  Does  the  movement  of 
living  Mind  speak  to  you  with,  power  in  this  oscillating 
pendulum,  or  this  perpetuity  of  rest?  Or  would  they  not 
rather  throw  upon  you  the  silent  shadow  of  an  eternal  Fate  ? 
May  we  not  say,  then,  that,  of  the  three  possibilities 
conceivable  in  the  course  of  Nature,  that  law  of  progression 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NA  TURE.  17 

which  is  now  registered  among  the  strong  probabihties  of 
science  is  the  most  accordant  ^Yith  the  divine  interpretation  of 
the  world '? 

I  conclude,  then,  that  neither  of  these  two  modern  dis- 
coveries, namely,  the  immense  extension  of  the  universe  in 
space,  and  its  unlimited  development  in  time,  has  any  effect 
on  the  theistic  faith,  except  to  glorify  it.  A  tissue  of 
intellectual  order  infinitely  wide,  a  history  of  ascending 
growth  immeasurably  prolonged,  surely  open  to  the  human 
mind  which  can  read  them  both,  everything  that  can  be 
asked  for  a  spectacle  entirely  divine.  No  one,  indeed,  could 
ever  have  supposed  that  religion  was  hurt  by  these  discoveries, 
had  not  Christendom  unhappily  bound  up  its  religion  with 
the  physics  of  Moses  and  of  Paul.  Setting  aside  any 
question  of  authority,  and  looking  with  fresh  eyes  at  the 
reality  itself,  who  would  not  own  that  we  live  in  a  more 
glorious  universe  than  they  ?  Wlio  would  go  to  a  Herschel 
and  say,  "  Eoof  over  your  stellar  infinitudes,  and  give  me 
back  the  solid  firmament,  with  its  waters  above  and  its  clouds 
beneath  ;  find  me  again  the  third  story  of  the  heavens, 
where  the  apostle  heard  the  ineffable  words?"  Who  would 
demand  of  a  Darwin,  ''  Blot  out  your  geologic  time,  and  take 
me  home  again  to  the  easy  limits  of  six  thousand  years  ?  " 
\Vlio,  I  say,  not  in  the  interests  of  science,  but  in  the  very 
hour  of  his  midnight  prayer,  would  wish  to  look  into  skies 
less  deep,  or  to  be  near  a  God  whose  presence  was  the  living 
chain  of  fewer  ages  ?  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  architects 
of  science  have  raised  over  us  a  nobler  temple,  and  the 
hierophants  of  Nature  introduced  us  to  a  sublimer  worship. 
I  do  not  say  that  they  alone  could  ever  find  for  us,  if  else  we 
knew  it  not,  ^yh^  it  is  that  fills  that  temple,  and  what  is  the 
inner  meaning  of  its  sacred  things  ;  for  it  is  not,  I  believe, 
through  any  physical  aspect  of  tlimgs,  if  that  were  all,  but 
through  the  human  experiences  of  the  conscience  and 
affections,  that  the  living  God  comes  to  apprehension  and 
communion  with  us.  But,  when  once  he  has  been  found  of 
us, — or  rather,  we  of  him,— it  is  of  no  small  moment  that  in 
our  mental  picture  of  the  universe,  an  abode  should  be 
prepared  worthy  of  a  Presence  so  dear  and  so  august,     ^ind 

G 


1 8  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

never,  prior  to  our  day,  did  "  the  heavens  "  more  "  declare 
his  glory,"  or  the  world  present  a  fitter  temple  for  "  Him  who 
inhabiteth  eternity." 

If  God  cannot  be  distinguished  from  the  universe  except  by 
being  placed  outside,  the  loss,  from  modern  scientific  concep- 
tions, of  empty  time  and  empty  space,  is  the  loss  of  him.  To 
the  childish  imagination,  to  distinguish  is  literally  to  set  apart ; 
and  objects  of  thought,  from  which  you  abolish  all  quantita- 
tive interval,  become  confounded.  Hence  the  prevailing  terror 
lest  what  we  had  taken  to  be  two  should  i^rove  to  be  only  one, 
and  the  doubt  whether  that  one  must  be  called  All-Nature  or 
All-God.  So  long  as  the  world  was  supposed  to  be  only  ten- 
score  generations  old,  it  was  easy  enough  to  separate  the 
provinces  of  God  and  Nature.  There  was  a  definite  date 
imagined  at  which  its  powers  were  set  to  work  and  put  in 
charge  of  the  order  of  things,  and,  prior  to  that  date,  nothing 
in  existence  but  his  lonely  infinitude.  Different  domains  of 
time  were  thus  marked  off  as  receptacles  of  supernatural  and 
of  natural  existence  ;  and,  though  the  Divine  Life  continued 
all  through,  its  activities  were  regarded  as  delegated  since  the 
creative  hour  ;  and  human  piety,  in  order  to  stand  face  to 
face  with  its  supreme  object,  had  to  fling  itself  back  into  the 
abyss  of  duration  "  before  the  mountains  were  brought  forth, 
or  ever  he  had  formed  the  earth  and  the  world."  His  proper 
realm  was  above  the  firmament  and  before  the  origin  of  things  ; 
and  as  soon  as  the  heavens  had  been  spread,  and  the  land  and 
sea  stocked  with  the  creatures  of  his  hand,  he  rested  from  his 
work,  and  entered  on  a  sabbath,  which  would  only  cease  when 
a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  should  be  called  into  being. 
No  doubt,  during  this  long  sabbath,  he  was  not  supposed  to  be 
entirely  without  part  in  this  scene  of  things  ;  but  it  was  chiefly 
in  human,  or,  if  in  physical,  in  exceptional  affairs,  that  any 
agency  of  his  was  traced  :  and  the  very  phrases  used  to  de- 
scribe it,  implying  always  some  intervention  of  righteousness 
or  mercy,  assume  a  certain  natural  order,  which  would  else 
take  its  own  course  to  other  ends  ;  for  whoever  overrides  steps 
upon  a  field  beyond  his  ordinary  ride.  Setting  aside  such 
interpositions,  we  may  say  that  the  courses  of  the  universe,  so 
fer  as  they  proceed  by  regular  law,  were  conceived  to  be  the 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NA  TURK.  19 

result  of  secondary  po\Yers  or  forces  of  nature,  distinct  from 
the  Divine  Will  during  their  term  of  agency,  and  in  contact 
with  it  only  at  their  first  adjustment.  He  was  the  first  term 
of  causation  ;  they  were  the  second.  The  natural  was  theirs ; 
the  supernatural  was  his.  Whatever  was  assigned  to  them 
was  taken  one  remove  from  him ;  whatever  was  reserved  for 
him  was  kept  at  one  remove  from  them.  So  that  the  larger 
their  domain  became,  the  more  did  his  retire  into  the  residuary 
space  beyond  the  boundaries  of  knowledge,  a  space  which, 
though  it  is  forever  infinite,  is  also  forever  blank. 

By  this  treaty  of  partition  between  science  and  religion, 
natural  forces  were  installed  in  full  possession  of  the  cosmos 
in  time,  and  the  Divine  Will  was  prefixed  to  it  to  be  its  origin. 
When,  therefore,  it  appeared  that  no  commencement  could  be 
found  ;  that  cosmical  time  goes  back  through  all  that  had 
been  called  eternity ;  that  for  the  prefix  of  an  almighty  fiat 
no  vacancy  could  be  shown,  the  natural  forces  seemed  to  have 
secured  the  system  of  things  all  to  themselves,  and  to  leave  no 
room  for  their  first  appearance  in  succession  to  an  earlier 
X)ower.  Faith,  terrified  at  the  prospect,  vowed  for  a  while 
still  to  search  somewhere  for  the  crisis  of  their  birth  ;  and, 
while  inexorable  Discovery  penetrated  the  past,  taking  the 
centuries  by  thousands  at  a  stride,  she  kept  beside  upon  the 
wing,  watching  with  anxious  eye  for  the  terminal  edge  which 
looked  into  the  deep  of  God  ;  till  at  last,  weary  and  droopii^g, 
she  could  sustain  the  flight  no  more,  and,  to  escape  falling 
into  the  fathomless  darkness,  took  refuge  in  the  bosom  of  her 
guide,  not  to  be  repelled  or  crushed,  as  she  had  feared,  but, 
as  we  shall  see,  to  be  cherished  and  revived. 

For  though  the  natural  forces  have  lost  their  birthda}-,  and 
seem  to  be  old  enough  for  anything,  they  gain  no  higher 
character  by  their  extension  of  time ;  and  do  not,  l)y  losing 
their  sequence  of  date,  lose  their  dependence  of  nature.  They 
are  no  more  entitled,  by  mere  longevit}-,  to  serve  an  ejectment 
•on  the  divine  element,  than  is  the  divine  element  to  claim 
everything  from  them.  The  reasons  for  recognizing  the 
Infinite  INIind  as  supreme  cause  are  in  no  way  superseded  by 
the  a<ic  of  this  or  any  other  globe.  It  was  not  because  the 
world  was  netc  that  we  had  resorted  to  the  thought  of  God  ; 

c  2 


20  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

not  because  having,  in  the  course  of  our  researches,  aUghted 
upon  a  chaos  at  one  date,  and  a  cosmos  at  another,  we  wanted 
a  means  of  bridging  the  chasm  between  them ;  but  because 
the  world  was  orderly  and  beautiful, — an  organism  of  intellec- 
tual relations,  the  original  of  all  our  science  and  art,  which 
tells  its  story  only  to  the  interpretation  of  thought  and  the 
divinations  of  genius.  And  t]ds  it  still  is,  and  by  its  very 
antiquity  is  shown,  so  far  as  we  can  tell,  to  have  forever  been. 
The  added  duration  extends  the  claims  of  both  agencies  alike, 
the  natural  and  the  divine ;  it  enables  neithei*  to  extrude  the 
other  ;  but  it  obliges  us  to  revise  the  relation  in  which  we  had 
placed  them  to  one  another.  They  can  no  longer  be  treated 
as  successive  in  time.  Are,  then,  the  natural  and  the  divine 
to  be  regarded  as  both  of  them  present  on  the  scene  ?  and,  if 
so,  how  do  they  make  partition  of  the  phenomena  between 
them  ?  We  are  thus  led  at  cnce  to  the  third  great  character- 
istic of  modern  science, — its  doctrine  of  the  correlation  and 
conservation  of  forces.  Let  us  look  at  it  in  itself  and  in  its 
religious  bearing. 

So  long  as  each  science  pursued  its  way,  without  regard  to 
its  neighbours,  the  force  with  which  it  had  to  deal  was  simply 
taken  up  at  its  entrance  on  that  particular  field,  and  escorted 
to  its  exit ;  and  hence  was  apparently  treated  (perhaps  oiily 
apparently)  as  though  there  it  were  born  and  there  it  perished, 
coming  nowhence  and  going  no  whither.  If  a  flash  of  light- 
ning struck  a  tree,  the  electricity  was  traced  to  the  cloud,  and 
s]3oken  of  as  if  it  were  original  there.  If  two  bodies  of  equal 
mass  and  velocity  met  fi'om  opposite  directions  and  brought 
each  other  to  rest,  the  impinging  forces  were  taken  as 
(mechanically)  destroyed.  If  this  idea  of  force  coming  out  of 
nothing  and  going  into  nothmg  were  really  ever  enter- 
tained, it  had  to  give  way  as  soon  as  the  sciences  lost  their 
isolation  and  were  contemplated  together.  Wlien  applications 
of  heat  were  found  to  evolve  electricity,  the  flash  of  lightning, 
ceasing  to  be  spontaneous,  fell  back  into  questions  about  the 
temperature  of  the  clouds  ;  and  from  the  shock  of  solid  bodies 
both  heat  and  electricity  were  developed  :  so  that  the  masses 
whose  motion  was  cancelled  to  mechanical  measurement  only 
handed    over    their    history   to   mquirers   in   another   field. 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  21 

Attention  once  being  drawn  to  this  migration  of  phenomena 
in  their  natural  series  from  one  science  to  another,   instances 
crowded  in  so  fast  that  the  rule  soon  acquired  a  wide  gene- 
rality.    There  is  not,  in  fact,  a  process  in  art  or  nature  which 
does  not  illustrate  it.     The  combustion  of  ordinary  fuel  is  an 
example  of  chemical    action,  resulting  on  the  one  hand  in 
light,  on  the  other   in    heat  :    the    heat,    when    applied    to 
water,  first  simply  raises  its  temperature  ;   then,  ceasing  to 
do  this,  spends  itself  in  producing  vapour,  and  metamorphoses 
itself  into  elasticity,  and  becomes  available  to  the  inquirer  as 
a  store  of  mechanical  power.     Every  railway  telegraph  that 
rings  a  bell  has  its  electric  current  generated  by  magnetic  or 
by  chemical  arrangements,  and  resulting  in  mechanical  motion 
and  in  sound ;  while,  in  every  photograph,  we  have  light  at 
the  first  point,  and  chemical  change  at  the  last.     Need  I  say 
how  this  transmutation  of  power  claims  to  cross  the  boundary 
from  the  inorganic  to  the  living  world  ?  how  the  solar  rays, 
acting  on  the  ingredients  of  the  soil,   deliver  them  into  the 
vital  structure  of  the  plant,  and  build  it  up  into  maturity? 
how  the  plant  again  becomes  the  nutriment  of  the  animal, 
and  the  senses  of  the  animal  respond  to  the  light  and  sound 
of  the  outer   world,  and    pass   on   into  the    elaborations   of 
thought,  and  enter  into  the  determinations  of  will?     And,  in 
all  this  transmigration,  the  movement  is  in  no   single  irre- 
versible direction,  but  is  strictly  reciprocal :  as  heat  will  earn 
for  you  mechanical  power,   so  will  mechanical  action,   as  is 
shown  in  the  friction  of  ever}^  machine,  develop  heat ;  as  you 
may  make  magnets  of   electricity,   so  will  moving  magnets 
give  you  your  electricity  again. 

These  effects  have  not  only  been  ascertained  over  a  field  of 
vast  extent,  but,  in  numerous  instances,  been  measured,  so  as 
to  justify  the  statement  that  the  quantity  of  force  which  van- 
ishes in  one  form  is  identical  v.ith  that  which  consecutively 
re-appears  in  another.  The  general  inference  is,  that  the 
distinction  of  forces  into  various  kinds  is  only  apparent,  not 
real ;  depending  on  the  medium  of  theii*  manifestation,  not 
upon  anything  in  their  intrinsic  nature  :  that  all  tlie  force 
behind  the  changes  of  the  world  is  One,  whether  it  assumes 
the  mask  of  tiiis  or  that  order  of  phenomena ;  that  nothing  is 


22  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

ever  added  to  it,  nothing  taken  from  it ;  that  it  circulates 
reciprocally  from  form  to  form  of  manifestation,  being  always 
capable  of  returning  by  any  steps  which  its  laws  may  enable 
it  to  take.  This  conception  of  force  is  the  more  readily  em- 
braced, because  motion,  which  is  its  perceptible  effect,  has  at 
the  same  time  been  similarly  simplifying  its  varieties  of  kind  : 
heat,  colour,  sound,  chemical,  electric,  and  magnetic  action, 
being  all  resolvable  into  motory  vibrations  of  different  and 
even  assignable  velocities. 

Here,  then,  we  have  Science  abolishing  her  own  plurality  of 
natural  powers,  and,  as  her  latest  act,  delivering  the  universe 
to  the  disposal  of  One  alone  ;  various  in  its  phases,  but  in  its 
essence  homogeneous.  It  is  impossible  not  to  press  the 
inquiry.  How  are  we  to  conceive  of  that  essence  ?  Which  of 
its  phases  represents  it  most  truly  ?  Does  it  more  resemble  a 
universal  elasticity,  like  steam  ?  or  a  universal  quivering,  like 
light  ?  or  a  universal  conscious  mind,  like  thought  in  man  ? 
or  must  we  say  that  probably  it  is  like  none  of  these,  and  that 
all  its  phases  i?zisrepresent  it  ?  To  answer  these  questions  we 
must  resort  to  the  fountain-head,  wherever  it  be,  whence 
Science  drew  what  she  has  to  say  about  this  hidden 
power.  Where  did  she  learn  to  think  about  it,  and  to  believe 
in  it? 

Not,  it  is  confessed,  in  her  ov^ii  proper  field  of  observation 
and  induction.  Nothing  comes  before  us  there  except  what 
speaks  to  our  perceiving  and  comparing  faculties.  Phenomena, 
one  after  another  in  time  ;  side  by  side  with  one  another  in 
space ;  like  or  unlike  one  another  in  aspect ;  these  are  all  that, 
with  such  resources,  we  can  ever  hope  to  find.  The  things 
that'  happen  being  visible  or  audible  or  tangible,  you  can  see 
or  hear  or  touch ;  and  you  can  write  down  the  order  in  which 
they  occur,  so  as  to  laiow  in  future  what  you  are  to  expect. 
But  the  power  behind,  that  turns  them  out  on  to  the  open 
theatre  for  us  to  look  at, — call  it  chemical,  electric,  vital,  as 
you  may,  tliat  does  not  come  into  the  court  of  eye  or  ear,  and 
could  never  cross  your  thought,  had  you  no  faculty  but  such 
as  these.  So  little  disputable  is  this,  that  philosophers  of 
the  newest  school  forbid  us,  on  the  strength  of  it,  to  ask 
about  causes   at    all,   as   lying    beyond    the   range   of    the 


Chap.  I.]      -  GOD  IN  NATURE.  -23 

human  faculties ;  and  would  limit  us  rigorously  to  the 
study  of  phenomena  in  their  groupings  and  their  series. 
The  restriction,  however,  is  too  severe  for  even  their  own 
observance ;  and,  in  spite  of  themselves,  words  denoting 
not  simply  sequencies  but  energies  continually  occur  in  their 
writings. 

Indeed,  as  I  have  elsewhere  observed,*  "  the  whole  literature 
of  science  is  pervaded  by  language  and  conceptions  strictly 
dynamical ;  and  if  an  index  expurgatorius  were  drawn  up,  pro- 
hibiting all  pretensions  that  went  beyond  'laws  of  uniformity,' 
it  would  make  a  clean  sweep  of  every  treatise,  physical  or 
metaphysical,,  from  the  time  of  Thales  to  our  own.  Comte 
himself  speaks  of  '  the  mutual  action  of  different  solar 
systems,'  and  of  '  the  action  of  the  sun  upon  the  planets  : ' 
he  says  that  '  the  mathematical  study  of  astronomical 
movements  indispensably  requires  the  conception  of  a  single 
force  :  '  he  speaks  of  the  '  thermological  actions  of  a  system 
mutually  destroying  each  other  ; '  and  of  a  '  character  special 
to  the  electrical  forces  which  presents  more  difficulty  than  the 
molecular  gravitations. 't  And  Mr.  Mill  tells  us  that  the  '  con- 
tiguous influence  of  chemical  action  is  not  a  powerful  force  ; ' 
that  '  electricity  is  now  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  universal 
of  natural  agencies  : '  he  speaks  of  '  a  force  growing  greater ' 
and  '  growing  less  ; '  of  the  '  action  of  the  central  forces  ; '  of 
the  *  propagation  of  influences  of  all  kinds ; '  and  dis- 
tinguishes '  motions,  forces,  and  other  influences  :  '  and  *  the 
motion  with  which  the  earth  tends  to  advance  m  a  direct  line 
through  space'  he  calls  'a  cause.' I  Whence  this  perpetual 
resort  to  an  idea  which  lies  out  beyond  that  simple  '  order  of 
phenomena  '  of  which  alone,  it  is  said,  we  are  competent  to 
speak?  .  .  .  Bain  seems  conscious  of  the  inconsistency  in 
which  such  use  of  dynamical  language  involves  the  disciples 
of  his  school ;  for  he  rebukes  it  thus :  '  To  express  causation 
we  need  only  name  one  thing,  the  antecedent  or  cause,  and 
another  thnig,  the  effect ;  a  flying  cannon-shot  is  a  cause,  the 

*  study  of  Religion,  B.  II.  ch.  i.  pp.  1.53-155  (2d  Edn.) 
t  Philos.  Pes.  II.  pp.  254,  250,  5G0,  708. 

:  System  of  Logic  {3rd  Ed.).  Vol.  i.  pp.  489,  501.  Vol.  ii.  pp.  33,  34. 
Vol.  i.  pp.  335,  352. 


.24  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

tumbling  down  of  a  wall  is  the  effect.  But  people  sometimes 
allow  themselves  the  use  of  the  additional  word^w^t^r  to  com- 
plete, as  they  suppose,  the  statement ;  the  cannon-ball  in 
motion  has  the  power  to  batter  walls  ;  a  pure  expletive  or 
pleonasm,  whose  tendency  is  to  create  a  mystical  or  fictitious 
agency,  in  addition  to  the  real  agent,  the  moving  ball.  '*  If 
the  author  of  this  criticism  would  try  the  effect  of  it  upon  an 
officer  of  engineers,  he  would  fnid  that  the  'expletive'  which 
he  derides  was  not  without  a  meaning  to  persons  acquainted 
with  cannon-balls,  and  that  the  '  mystical '  element  was 
actually  reducible  to  figures,  and  the  object  of  innumerable 
problems  far  from  being  insoluble  and  still  further  from  being 
fictitious."  Nay,  the  very  language  which  he  criticises  he,  too, 
is  unable  to  avoid  :  he  tells  us  of  "  moving  power  expended  ;  " 
of  "  primal  sources  of  energy ;  "  "  gravity,"  he  says,  "is  an 
attractive  force  ;  and  another  great  attractive  force  is  cohesion, 
or  the  force  that  binds  together  the  atoms  of  solid  matter."! 
No  struggles  of  ingenuity  avail  to  prevent  these  self- variations  : 
the  theory  of  these  writers  is  refuted  by  their  vocabulary. 
With  more  consistency,  and  surely  with  deeper  insight,  the 
authors  of  the  doctrine  of  conservation  which  we  are  review- 
ing have  said  in  effect,  "  We  grant  you,  force  is  not  a 
phenomenon  which  can  be  observed  ;  but  it  is  indispensable 
for  the  conception  of  all  phenomena ;  and,  quarrel  with  it  as 
we  may,  it  will  always  be  supplied  in  thought :  it  is  as  much 
their  intuitive  background  of  origination,  as  space  of  their 
position,  and  time  of  their  succession,  and  has  no  less  good  a 
right  than  these  to  a  place  among  the  assumptions  of  science. 
Its  j  Listification  is  in  its  own  necessity  ;  its  guarantee  is  in 
the  very  structure  of  our  faculties  ;  before  which  you  can 
never  present  a  change  without  awakening  belief  in  a  power 
which  issues  it." 

Thus  it  is  admitted  that  our  own  mind  carries  us  behind 
the  phenomenon  as  seen,  and,  supplementing  it  by  an  act  of 
necessary  thought,  precludes  us  from  conceiving  it  at  all 
except  as  dealt  out  by  a  power.  We  believe  this  dynamical 
axiom  on  its  own  account,  precisely  as  we  believe,  though  we 

*  INIental  and  Moral  Science,  p.  406. 
f  Inductive  Logic,  pp.  35,  33,  121. 


Chap.  I.]  COD   IN  NATURE.  25 

never  experience,  many  things  besides  our  own  trains  of  sen- 
sation and  inward  change  ;  precisely  as  we  beheve  in  the 
presence  of  an  external  world,  in  the  infinity  of  space,  in 
the  immensity  of  duration, — all  of  them  lying  around,  and 
not  within  the  sphere  of  our  personality,  and  all  therefore 
out  of  reach,  if  we  know  only  what  turns  up  within  ourselves. 
But  if  we  accept  the  idea  of  power  because  it  is  given  us  in 
necessary  thought,  we  must  accept  it  also  as  it  is  given  us  in 
thought  :  there  is  no  other  rule  by  which  to  fix  and  clear  it. 
What,  then,  is  that  idea  of  causality  which  mingles  for  us 
with  all  our  impressions  of  this  moving  world  ?  "What  kind 
of  haunting  presence  is  it  which,  under  this  name,  our  intui- 
tion spreads  behind  the  scene  ?  And  what  part  of  our  nature, 
what  function  of  our  reason,  is  it,  which  sets  it  there  '?  The 
answer  is  neither  doubtful  nor  indistinct.  There  is  but  one 
source  which  can  tell  us  anything  of  causality  at  all,  viz.,  our 
own  exercise  of  voluntary  activity  ;  and  there  it  is  that  we 
learn  what  it  is  to  put  forth  power,  lo  meet  resistance,  to 
produce  effects.  Were  we  merely  passive  ;  were  eye  and  ear 
only  beaten  upon  by  the  pulsating  elements,  so  as  to  have 
vision  and  sound,  but  not  to  look  and  listen ;  did  we  only  lie 
still  to  feel,  and  never  start  up  to  act,  all  that  fell  upon  us 
would  stream  through  us  like  the  images  of  a  dream ;  and, 
though  we  should  be  forever  suffering  effects,  we  should  never 
ask  about  a  cause.  And  this  is  approximately  the  case  of 
creatures  that  are  meant  to  feel  and  live,  but  not  to  knoic. 
But  add  on  the  other  half  of  our  nature  ;  let  the  lines  of 
energy  go  forth  from  it,  as  well  as  flow  in  upon  it ;  above  all, 
set  its  organs  and  movements  at  the  disposal  of  a  free  and 
reasonable  will ;  and  with  the  active  the  cognitive  faculties 
will  rise  to  their  completeness :  the  causality  within  will 
apprehend  the  causality  without ;  and  a  powder  will  be  invisibly 
interfused  behind  the  visible  incidents  of  the  world,  the 
counterpart  of  that  which  we  wield  ourselves.  This  personal 
tension  by  which  we  pass  from  the  centre  to  the  circumference 
of  our  field,  and  institute  a  movement,  a  look,  an  attention, 
is  power :  if  with  attainment  of  ends,  successful  power ; 
if  otherwise,  still  power,  though  frustrated.  Nothing  is  so 
intimately  and  directly  familiar  to  us  as  tins :  it  is  coincident 


26  A  UTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

with  the  spontaneous  side  of  our  Hfe,  as  distinguished  from 
the  recipient :  it  is  at  no  distance  from  our  essence,  and 
defines  and  constitutes  our  proper  self.  It  is  the  point  where 
the  interval  is  lost  between  our  being  and  our  knowing  :  only 
in  putting  out  force  am  I,  in  fact  and  thought,  myself.  True 
it  is,  I  do  not  become  aware  of  it,  even  in  exercising  it ;  i.e., 
I  do  not  make  it  an  object  of  reflection,  except  in  presence  of 
the  opposite  phenomenon  of  passive  sensation,  especially  of 
impediment  or  arrested  movement.  But,  in  thus  waking  up 
to  what  I  have  been  about,  the  apprehension  of  energy  issued 
is  no  inference  from  data,  no  hypothesis  of  thought  which 
might  be  erroneous  and  deals  with  the  unknown,  but  an 
immediate  intuition  of  a  reality  supremely  certain.  Here  at 
home,  we  have  first-hand  acquaintance  with  power  ;  and  no- 
where else  can  this  experience  repeat  itself.  Even  in  the  re- 
action of  objects  upon  us,  we  do  not  know  how  they  deal  with 
us,  on  quite  the  same  terms  on  which  we  know  how  to  deal  with 
them  ;  but  we  are  aware  that  their  action  is  opposite  :  and  on 
the  principle  tteo)  tmv  avTiKU}iLvMV  tv^v  avTr\v  dvciL  lTn(TTr]fxr]v , 
we  extend  to  them  the  same  attribute  by  which  we  have  moved 
upon  them.  So  that,  in  owning  their  causality,  we  proceed 
on  a  different  guarantee  from  that  which  assures  us  of  our 
own,  and  apply  to  them  a  category  of  thought  which  is, 
indeed,  the  only  one  possible,  and  which  covers  them  by  a 
necessary  act  of  the  intellect,  but  which  is  not  identical  with 
the  central  consciousness  of  egoistic  power.  Still  less  is  there 
any  first-hand  access  to  the  idea  of  force  in  the  action  of  one 
external  body  upon  another.  As  witnesses  of  such  pheno- 
mena alone,  we  could  never  pass  beyond  the  law  of  succes- 
sion ;  and  whatever  we  think  further  is  an  element  intuitively 
imported  from  our  own  dynamical  experience.  Were  we  only 
observers,  therefore,  we  should  not,  I  repeat,  have  the  idea  of 
power  ;  for  it  is  beyond  the  reach  of  sight  and  of  every  other 
perception.  Were  we  only  imtients,  it  would  be  inaccessible  ; 
for  then,  in  the  absence  of  anything  distinct  from  them,  we 
should  not  have  sensations,  but  only  he  sensations  ;  and  could 
not  escape  from  them  to  ask  about  their  "  whence."  It  is  as 
agents  that  we  get  behind  phenomena,  instead  of  looking  at 
them,  and  learn  the  secret  of  their  origin  ;  and  the  causal 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  27 

idea  which  by  an  intellectual  law  we  then  a^ply  to  all  observed 
phenomena  is  wholly  supplied  from  this  known  fund  of  ])er- 
sonal  efficiency.  In  other  words,  by  power  we  mean  icdl; 
neither  more  nor  yet  less :  the  word  has  no  other  possible 
signification ;  there  is  no  source  which  can  add  any  new 
element  to  this  primitive  type  of  the  conception  ;  and  if  any- 
thing be  taken  away,  it  can  only  be  the  accessories  which 
distinguish  this  from  that  variety  of  will,  leaving  untouched 
the  central  idea  of  living  agency.  The  same  law  of  thought, 
therefore,  which  guarantees  to  us  our  action  of  power,  inter- 
prets that  power  into  will,  and  fixes  on  the  highest  phase  of 
force  as  that  mto  which  all  others  are  to  be  resolved.  And  so 
this  last  and  most  refined  generalization  of  science  justifies  the 
sublime  faith,  that  the  sole  power  in  the  phenomenal  universe 
is  the  Divine  Intellect  and  Will,  eternally  transmuting  itself 
into  the  cosmical  order,  and  assuming  the  phases  of  natural 
force  as  modes  of  manifestation  and  paths  of  progression  to 
ends  of  beauty  and  of  good. 

The  same  conclusion  arises  from  another  aspect  of  the  same 
law.  I  have  said  that  the  convertible  forces  may  often  be 
submitted  to  the  test  of  actual  measurement ;  and  that  the 
amounts  prove  to  be  identical  before  and  after  the  metamor- 
phosis. This  would  seem  to  imply  that  it  was  a  matter 
of  indifference  to  which  side  of  the  equation  we  looked  for  the 
principal  and  representative  term  ;  that  the  movement  could 
be  read  equally  well  either  way,  and  that  the  two  sides  were 
absolutely  interchangeable  for  all  purposes.  Yet  it  is  not  so. 
In  comparing  the  several  forms  of  power,  there  are  two 
dimensions  of  value  which  you  have  to  estimate  ;  not  their 
quantity  only,  but  their  quality  too ;  and  of  the  latter  no 
system  of  equivalents,  no  gauge  of  "  foot-pounds,"  or  other 
standard,  takes  any  notice  or  gives  any  account.  Having 
measured,  e.g.,  the  dose  of  light  and  heat  expended  in  growing 
a  definite  portion  of  your  food,  suppose  that  you  could  further 
find  the  equivalent  chemical  action  which  reduced  that  food 
into  the  material  of  blood  ;  and  then  tlic  measure  of  vital 
force  for  assimilating  the  blood,  and  turning  some  of  it  into 
brain  ;  and  finally  the  store  of  nervous  power  laid  out  thence 
in  the  service  of  thought ;  these  quantities,  by  the  rule,  must 


28  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

be  all  equal  in  amount ;  but  they  leave  the  several  stages,  in 
their  other  dimension  of  quality,  wholly  incommensurable  and 
inconvertible.  What  degree  of  the  thermometer  can  be  the 
equivalent  of  a  stanza  of  "  In  Memoriam,"  or  of  a  happy 
stroke  of  philosophical  genius  ?  What  photometric  scale  can 
give  the  value  of  a  moral  act  of  self-denial,  or  a  glad  sacrifice 
of  love  ?  How  many  grains  of  the  protoids  or  the  fats  are 
tantamount  to  a  penitential  psalm,  or  to  the  agony  of  Geth- 
semane  ?  Among  your  forces,  then,  equate  and  proportionate 
them  as  you  may,  there  remains,  besides  the  measure  of  their 
material  media,  an  indestructible  difference  of  dignity,  which 
ranges  them  on  an  ascending  scale,  and  forbids  you  to  read 
them  indifferently  backwards  or  forwards,  though  their  scientific 
numbers  may  be  equivalent.  Now,  when  we  bring  the  One 
force  into  which  all  are  resolved  before  the  face  of  this  ascend- 
ing scale,  on  wldcli  step  shall  we  find  the  term  which  coincides 
with  it  in  character '?  Where  is  the  type  of  power  which,  not 
in  amount  only,  but  in  kind  too,  is  all-comprehending,  and 
omits  no  requisite  for  exchange  with  all  the  rest  ?  Is  it  not 
obvious,  that,  as  in  quantity  the  less  can  never  match  the 
greater,  so  in  quality  the  inferior  can  never,  out  of  its  own 
resources,  convert  itself  into  the  superior  ?  while  the  higher, 
containing  more  than  all  that  is  wanted  for  the  lower,  can  take 
the  descending  place  by  merely  suspending  wdiat  is  superfluously 
good  ?  You  cannot  deny  the  prerogative  of  will  to  reduce  it- 
self to  lower  phases  ;  to  forego  its  own  freedom,  for  determinate 
law  ;  to  pass,  therefore,  by  descending  transmigration,  into 
the  form  of  force,  vital,  chemical,  mechanical :  for  it  would 
indeed  be  perverse  to  insist  that  dead  and  blind  power  can 
transmute  itself  into  living  intellectual  energy,  yet  deny  that 
mind  can  divest  itself  of  its  voluntary  alternatives,  and 
pledge  itself  to  the  lines  of  lower  rules.  The  conclusion, 
then,  is  again,  on  this  ground,  irresistible,  that  the  One 
Power  which  appears  under  guise  so  various  must,  in  order  to  be 
adequate  to  its  highest  demands,  include  all  that  its  supreme 
phases  display,  and  must  be  thought  of,  not  as  the  gravitation 
that  answers  to  our  weight,  not  as  the  undulation  which 
reaches  us  in  the  form  of  heat,  not  even  as  the  vital  current  of 
our  life,  but  as  the  soul  of  our  soul,  the  fountain  and  prototype 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  29 

of  our  thought  and  conscience,  with  whom  our  relation  rises 
at  once  from  convertibiHty  of  force  into  communion  of  spirit. 
What,  then,  has  become  of  the  secondary  causes  supposed 
to  be  set  up  at  the  creation  as  delegated  administrators  of  this 
universe?     They  are  merged  in  the  primary  will,  which,  in- 
stead of  planting  them  as  vicegerents  outside  itself,    holds 
them  as  modes  and  rules  of  its  own  permanent  action.     Am  I 
asked  whether  this  is  not  pantheism,^ — this  identification  of 
the  dynamical  life  of  the  universe  with  God  ?     I  reply,  it  cer- 
tainly would  be  so,  if  we  also  turned  the  proposition  round, 
and  identified  God  with  no  more  than  the  life  of  the  universe, 
and  treated  the  two  terms  as  for  all  purposes  interchangeable. 
If,  in  affirming  the  divine  immanency  in  nature,  we  mean  to 
deny  the  divine  transcendency  beyond  nature,  and  to  pay  our 
worship  to  the  aggregate  of  all  its  powers,  the  law  of  its  laws, 
the  unity  of  its  organism  ;  if  we  merely  sum  up  in  one  expres- 
sion its  interior  modes  of  movement,  in  anticipation  of  some 
unknown  formula  whence  they  may  be  all  deduced,  then,  un- 
doubtedly, we  do  but  pass  from  part  to  whole,  and  rest  in  a 
dream  of  future  science,  instead  of  emerging  into  immediate 
religion.     But,  if  this  were  our  thought,  we  should  choose  some 
other  phrase  than  u:'dl  to  denote  the  inner  principle  of  the 
world  :  for  it  implies  intellect  and  purpose  ;  and  of  these,  as- 
suredly, the  winds  and  waves,  the  light  and  heat,  the  curving 
projectile,   the   oxidizing   metal,    the   crystallizing   fluid,  the 
growing  plant,  are  not  conscious  ;  so  that,  in  resolving  their 
forces  into  will,  we  mean  to  aftirm  more  than  belongs  to  them 
"per  se,  and  to  put  their  l)lind  phenomena  in  relation  to  a  con- 
sciousness beyond  them  which  knows  and  wields  them.     It  is 
precisely  to  mark  this  transcendent  element,  this  presence  of 
a  living  idea  in  objects  that  are  not  alive,  that  we  avail  our- 
selves of  the  word  "  will ;  "  and,  but  for  this,  we  should  else, 
with  Spinoza,  be  careful  to  ward  off  the  ascription  of  under- 
standing antl  ^\ill  from  the  immanent  Cause.     Schopenhauer, 
it  is  true,  has  tried  to  divest  the  word  "  will  *'  of  the  intellectual 
part  of  its  meaning ;  to  discharge  from  it  all  idea  of  thought 
or  purpose,  and  thin  it  down  to  the  significance  of  blind  power 
from  within.     He  has  substituted  it  for  the  word  force ;  not 
that  it  may  carry  a  larger  sense,  and  suggest  the  notion  of 


30  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

intentional  aim ;  but  simply  to  mark  the  point  of  personal  ex- 
perience, the  exercise  of  living  activity,  which  gives  us  the 
dynamic  idea.  But  he  cannot  go  thither  for  his  word,  yet 
fetch  it  away  in  that  starved  and  blind  condition  :  expel  from 
will  all  consciousness,  all  light,  all  direction  upon  an  end,  and 
it  is  will  no  more  ;  nor  will  men  ever  consent  to  embrace 
within  the  language  of  volition  the  physical  and  the  moral 
phenomena  of  the  world, — the  dash  of  the  torrent  and  the 
struggle  of  human  resolve, — unless  it  be  to  infuse  an  ethical 
character  into  nature,  instead  of  driving  it  off  from  the  chief 
faculty  of  man.  In  identifying,  then,  the  natural  forces  with 
will,  we  mean,  not  that  it  is  essentially  no  more  than  tlicy,  but 
that  tl\e]i  are  essentially  no  less  than  it ;  that  their  action  is 
attended,  therefore,  by  a  living  consciousness,  and  intellectual 
conformity  with  a  given  drift  and  law  ;  and  since  these  con- 
comitants are  not  intrinsic  to  the  several  objects  (which  are 
the  seat  of  action,  without  feeling  their  own  phenomena) ,  they 
are  present  with  a  mind  abiding  in  the  midst,  and  supplying 
the  ideal  to  what  else  were  but  material.  Instead,  therefore, 
of  cutting  down  the  conception  of  God  to  the  measure  of 
natural  objects,  and  leaving  it  only  as  the  sum  total  of  their 
attributes,  we  elevate  them  to  his  standard,  and  supplement 
their  sensible  qualities  by  relations  with  invisible  thought  and 
conscious  knowledge.  Thus,  he  is  not  the  equivalent  of  the 
All,  but  its  directing  mind  ;  conscious  where  it  is  unconscious  ; 
seeing  where  it  is  blind  ;  intending  the  future,  where  it  only 
issues  from  the  past. 

Here,  then,  is  one  way  in  which,  if  the  expression  may  be 
allowed,  God  and  the  world  part  company :  at  the  lower  end 
of  the  scale  of  being  there  are  natures  included  in  his  Evvafxig, 
whose  phenomena,  unfelt  by  themselves,  are  under  cognizance 
by  him  ;  at  the  upper  end  of  the  scale,  the  distinction  is  again 
effected,  from  an  opposite  cause.  There  are  natures  individually 
sentient,  rational,  moral,  whose  phenomena,  felt  by  themselves, 
are  unfelt  by  him.  The  hunger  or  the  rage  of  the  wild  quad- 
ruped, the  pain  of  the  wounded  bird,  the  perplexity  of  human 
thought,  the  rapture  of  relieved  anxiety,  the  remorse  of  insulted 
conscience, — these  are  experiences  not  predicable  of  him  ;  they 
are  objects  of  his  cognition ;  but  the  only  subjects  of  them  are 


Chap.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  3t 

some  members  or  other  of  the  hierarchy  of  creatures.  Here, 
therefore,  we  aHght  in  the  universe  on  something  which  is  not 
inchided  in  his  personal  being  ;  something  which  must  be 
treated  as  objective  to  him  ;  something  which,  as  universal 
power,  he  causes  ;  which,  as  omniscient  intellect,  he  knows  ; 
but  which,  as  infinite  perfection,  lie  cannot  feel.  As,  before, 
he  was  more  than  the  "  All,"  here  he  would  seem  to  be  less 
than  the  All ;  and  the  identity  between  God  and  nature,  in 
which  pantheism  consists,  is  again  disturbed,  and  the  two 
schemes  of  thought  are  further  distinguished.  I  need  hardly 
add  that  he  is  "  less  than  the  All,"  not  as  inadequate  to  its 
comprehension  and  control,  but  as  having  immunity  from  soine 
of  its  phenomena  ;  only  as  the  life  of  the  saintly  and  the  wise 
is  "  less  than  "  that  of  guilty  folly  by  exemption  from  its  com- 
punctions and  unrest.  It  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  perfect 
nature  to  miss  such  experiences  as  these.  And  it  is  the  fatal 
necessity  of  pantheism,  that  by  making  the  consciousness  of 
God  identical  with  that  of  all  sentient  creatures,  by  treating 
them  as  but  the  leaves,  and  him  as  the  sap,  of  the  great  life- 
tree,  it  has  to  predicate  of  him  every  error  and  weakness  be- 
longing to  them  ;  and  make  him,  not  cause  alone,  but  subject, 
of  all  the  sorrows  and  falsehoods  of  the  world. 

We  may  present  the  distinction  between  the  two  theories 
in  another  light.  It  is  the  peculiarity  of  pantheism  to  admit 
■of  nothing  ohjective  to  God.  In  his  causal  relation,  he  is  the 
inner  side  of  nature,  its  principle  of  spontaneous  development, 
the  natura  naturans  which  is  forever  emerging  in  the  natura 
naturata;  and  for  that  Infinite  Being  there  is  no  "  beyond  " 
on  to  which  any  transitive  action  can  pass  ;  no  self-escape  in 
order  to  deal  with  what  is  other;  but  only  an  eternal  weaving 
of  the  tissue  of  phenomena  from  some  focus  within  towards 
some  circumference  that  is  not  without.  But  when  we  adopt 
the  idea  of  will  to  mark  the  essence  of  God,  we  do  exactly 
the  reverse  of  this  :  we  thereby  claim  something  objective  to 
him,  on  to  which  his  thought,  his  purpose,  his  power,  may 
pass  ;  for  it  is  the  characteristic  of  will  to  stand  face  to  face 
with  an  end  in  view  :  to  distinguish  itself  from  what  is  other 
than  self,  and  look  forth  on  things  and  persons  around  as  the 
scene    given   for   its   activity.      In   merging,    therefore,  the 


32  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Rook  I. 

forces  of  nature  in  the  will  of  God,  we  expressly  guard 
ourselves  against  drowning  the  objective  field  under  the 
overwhelming  flood  of  the  divine ;  and  stipulate  that,  in  some 
way  or  other,  be  it  by  space  and  matter  given,  or  by  lending 
out  and  fixing  at  certain  centres  stores  of  delegated  power, 
there  shall  be  reserved  a  theatre  and  objects  of  possible 
action  for  an  intending  and  effectuating  mmd.  Wliether  or 
not  the  theory  can  be  worked  out,  its  idea  and  purpose 
evidently  are  to  negative  the  first  principles  of  pantheism. 

But  how  are  we  to  carry  out  this  purpose,  and  provide  a 
domain  that  shall  be  objective  to  God  ?  Must  we  assume 
such  a  thing  to  have  been  already  always  there,— a  primitive 
datum,  eternal  as  himself?  or  must  he  be  regarded  as 
furnishing  himself  with  objects,  and  causing  the  very  field  of 
his  own  causality  ?  The  problem  lies  on  the  ultimate 
confines  of  human  thought ;  but,  if  I  read  it  aright,  neither 
of  these  assumptions  is  adequate  to  its  solution,  without  the 
other  ;  and  we  must  use  them  both,  in  order  to  conceive 
without  mutilating  the  divine  relations  to  the  universe. 

To  raise  the  question  whether  a  jDure  subjectivity  can  give 
rise  to  its  own  objects  is  to  propose  an  empty  riddle.  Its 
sense  is  zero  ;  and  the  answer  can  only  be  its  echo.  An 
"  absolute  subject  "is  no  less  a  contradiction  in  thought  than 
a  single-termed  equation,  or  an  uncaused  effect.  To  be  a 
"  subject "  is  to  have  an  "  object,"  and  hold  an  existence,  not 
"  absolute,"  but  relative  ;  and  the  moment  we  conceive  of 
mind  at  all,  or  any  operation  of  mind,  we  must  concurrently 
conceive  of  something  other  than  it  as  engaging  its  activity. 
This  thing  which  occupies  it,  or  tliat, — empirical  particulars 
without  number,  may  be  later  than  the  mind,  and  arise  in 
the  course  of  its  history.  But,  when  these  are  all  withdrawn, 
there  must  still  remain,  coeval  with  itself  and  inseparable 
from  itself,  some  field  of  possible  experience  to  carry  the 
requisites  indispensable  for  thought  in  any  form.  God, 
therefore,  cannot  stand  for  us  as  the  sole  and  exhaustive  term 
in  the  realm  of  uncreated  being:  as  early  and  as  long  as 
he  is,  must  also  be  somewhat  objective  to  him.  To  the 
primordial  condition  we  are  helped  by  our  intuitive  apprehen- 
sion of  the  infinitude   of  Space,  supplying   a   field   already 


Chap.  I.]  COD  IN  NATURE.  33 

there  for  the  most  ancient  movement  of  thought  out  of  itseh'. 
Space,  hov/ever,  is  not  itself  an  object,  but  onl}'  the  oppor- 
tunity for  objects ;  so  that  there  is,   perhaps,   still  need  of 
another   datum ;    viz.,    flatter  occupying   finite   place.     It  is 
quite  possible,  indeed,  to  refine  upon  this  word  and  reduce  it 
to  "  solidified  extension  ;  "  to  resolve  solidity  into  resistance  ; 
and  to  conceive  of  points  of  space  hardened  by  becoming  the 
depositories  of  a  repelling  force,  forbidding  all  else  to  snter ; 
and  in  this  way  to  construe  the  material  element  back  iiitc 
the  play  of  omnipotence  in  space.     But   for  those  who  find 
it  difficult   to   work   out   this    last    simplification,    we    may 
concede  matter  also,  or  extended  solidity,  in  addition  to  space, 
as  a  datum  of  the  problem,  and  as  the  rudimentary  object  for 
the  intellectual  and  dynamic  action  of  the  supreme  subject. 
Here  at   once   is  presented  a  field  comprising  an  immense 
tissue  of  relations  ;  all  that  can  be  evolved  by  the  sciences  of 
measure  and   of  number,    or   deduced   among   the   primary 
qualities  of  body  ;    and  in  thinking  out  the  universe  under 
these  conditions,  the  Divine  Intellect  moves  in  stei)s  of  pure 
deduction  on  an  eternal  ground,  and  justifies  the  saying  of 
Plato,  that  God  is  the  great  Geometer. 

But  on  this  field  of  necessary  truth  there  is  no  scope  for 
the  alternatives  of  will,  or  the  inventive  exercise  of  creative 
reason.  These  enter,  however,  at  the  next  stage  ;  for  when 
the  remaining  attributes  of  l)ody  are  filled  in,  it  must  be  by 
pure  origination ;  for  no  links  of  demonstrative  thought 
connect  them  with  the  prior  group,  nor  can  the  keenest 
insight  discover  that  they  might  not  have  l)een  otherwise. 
When  the  circle  is  given,  all  the  properties  of  its  intersecting 
chords,  the  relations  of  their  tangents,  the  comparative  size 
of  an  arc's  central  and  peripheral  angles,  are  unalterably 
determined.  But  why  undulations  in  one  medium  should 
produce  sound,  and  in  another  light;  why  one  speed  of 
vibration  should  give  red  colour  and  another  blue,  can  be 
explained  by  no  reason  of  necessity.  These  things  we  must 
attribute  to  that  which  alone  can  determine  the  indeter- 
minate; viz.,  a  selecting  will,  making  for  itself  rules  of 
uniformity,  and  betaking  itself  here  to  this  order,  there  to 
that,     in    thus   formulating   his   power,    and  distributing  it 

D 


34  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

through  the  material  datum,  God  makes  it  ohjectivc  in  two 
senses.  He  puts  it  into  that  ^Yhich  is  otiier  than  himself,  and 
he  parts  with  otlier  use  of  it,  by  pre-engagement  to  an  end. 
This  is  all  that  is  required  for  the  setting  up  of  other  natures, 
which  are  thenceforth  a  guaranteed  presence  on  the  field, 
secure  of  their  own  distinctive  history.  But  the  power 
lodged  in  them  for  the  conduct  of  that  history  remains,  in  one 
sense,  subjective  to  God.  He  is  its  eternal  supply,  the 
continuous  source  of  its  regulated  ebb  and  flow  in  eyeiy  inlet 
and  channel  of  being ;  apart  from  whom  the  universal 
organism  would  cease  its  pulsations  and  collapse.  To  say 
thus  much  of  his  agency  in  nature  is  only  to  re-assert  the 
ancient  claim  of  a  perpetual  upholding  or  perpetual  creation 
of  the  universal  order  by  divine  power.  "  In  him  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being." 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  this  conception  will  not 
work  satisfactorily  except  in  the  lower  departments  of  creation, 
ere  we  have  entered  upon  the  stage  which  we  occupy  ourselves. 
The  vast  system  of  cosmical  mechanics  and  chemistry,  the  struc- 
ture of  the  solar  and  the  stellar  worlds,  we  readily  contemplate 
as  a  whole,  pervaded  by  universal  modes  of  power,  and  sub- 
sisting as  the  organ  of  God's  legislated  will.  But  when  we  look 
at  the  other  end  of  the  hierarchy  of  originated  being,  especially 
at  ourselves,  of  whom  our  knowledge  is  most  intimate,  it  is  no 
longer  possible  to  retain  this  close  interfusion  of  the  divine 
and  the  created  natures.  Whatever  not  only  lives,  but  feels 
and  consciously  acts,  must  have  somethmg  of  its  own. ;  must 
appropriate  the  impressions  it  receives,  and  have  the  credit  of 
the  energies  it  puts  forth,  and  cannot  be  regarded  as  the  mere 
organ  through  which  flows  a  foreign  power.  If  my  thoughts 
were  passed  through  me  by  another  ;  if  my  desires,  affections, 
resolves,  were  phenomena  of  a  force  upon  its  travels  that 
chose  to  come  my  way ;  if,  further,  the  whole  genius  and 
knowledge  of  the  human  race,  the  moral  struggles  of  its  heroes, 
'he  literature,  philosophy,  and  art  of  its  cultivated  nations, 
were  but  the  ripplings  of  the  Divine  Reason  upon  a  world  itself 
the  aggregate  of  divine  powers, — there  would,  in  fact,  be  only 
One  Person  in  the  universe,  and  the  whole  drama  of  our  life 
and  history  would  dissolve  into  an  illusion.     To  provide  tor 


Chnp.  I.]  GOD  IN  NATURE.  35 

this  higher  class  of  cases  which  culminates  in  prrsonalitij,  we 
must  recognize  a  further  stage  of  detadimcnf  of  power  from 
its  source  than  we  have  hitherto  mentioned,  and  admit  the 
conception  of  delegated  force,  lent  out  for  a  term,  in  order  to 
work  the  conditions  of  a  distinct  existence,  and  relapsing  when 
the  term  is  over.  Of  the  so-called  "  natural  forces,"  each  one 
in  the  ascending  scale  is  more  special  and  specializing  than 
the  preceding,  more  characteristic  of  particular  natures,  and 
gathered  around  centres  of  individuality,  till,  at  the  furthest 
distance  from  universal  gravitation,  we  emerge  into  the  con- 
scious Ego  of  intellectual  existence  which  finally  sets  up 
another  jJCJ'son.  This  j9/a«i2"»//-o«i  of  power,  and  storing  it  at 
single  foci,  to  be  disposed  of  from  within  under  given  rules  of 
life,  breaks  no  allegiance  to  its  sole  Fountain-head,  and  estab- 
lishes no  second  source  for  it,  but  merely  determines  that,  on 
touching  the  conditions  of  living  beings,  it  shall  have  a  con- 
sciousness which  is  not  God's,  though  known  to  him,  and  to 
which  its  further  course  of  administration  shall  be  for  a  while 
consigned. 

Even  then  within  the  realm  of  undisputed  pliysie-al  law,  and 
without  emerging  beyond  the  region  of  natural  history,  we 
meet  with  provinces  of  reality  objective  to  God  in  various 
degrees,  without  prejudice  to  the  identification  of  all  power 
with  his  will.  But  the  full  security  against  the  dissolving  mists 
of  pantheism  is  first  obtained  when  we  quit  the  simply  natural 
field  in  which  nothing  is  possible  but  in  linear  links  of  succes- 
sion, and  stand  in  presence  of  the  supernatural  in  man,  to 
whom  an  alternative  is  given,  and  in  whom  is  a  real  mind,  or 
miniature  of  God,  consciously  acting  from  a  selected  end  in 
view.  Here  it  is  that  we  first  learn  the  solemn  difference  in 
ourselves  between  what  is  and  what  might  be  ;  and,  carrying 
the  lesson  abroad,  discover  how  faint  a  symbol  is  visible 
nature  of  its  ideal  essence  and  Divine  Cause.  Here  it  is,  that, 
after  long  detention  in  our  prison  of  facts,  the  walls  l)ecome 
transparent,  and  let  us  see  the  fields  more  than  elysian  beyond. 
The  Eternal  is  more  than  all  that  he  has  done.  And  if  the 
universe,  with  all  its  vastness,  is  only  the  single  actuality  which 
shapes  itself  out  of  a  sea  of  possibilities  ;  if  its  laws  are  but 
one  function  of  thought  in  a  j\Iind  that  transcends  them  every 

n  2 


36  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [3ook  I. 

way ;  then,  in  being  the  indwelling  beauty  and  power  of  the 
world,  he  does  not  cease  to  be  the  living  God  above  the  world 
and  though  the  world  were  gone.  Still  more,  if,  within  the 
local  realm  of  his  administration,  there  is  an  enclosure  which 
he  has  chosen  to  rail  off  as  sacred  for  a  minor  divineness 
like  his  own,  for  a  free  and  spiritual  life,  having  pla}"  enough 
from  the  thraldom  of  natural  laws  for  responsible  movements 
cf  its  own  ;  then,  however  resistless  the  sweep  of  his  power 
elsewhere,  here,  at  the  threshold  of  this  shrine  of  conflict  and 
of  prayer,  he  gently  pauses  in  his  almightiness,  and  lets  only 
his  love  and  righteousness  enter  in.  Here  is  a  holy  place 
reserved  for  genuine  moral  relations  and  personal  affections, 
for  infinite  pity  and  finite  sacrifice,  for  tears  of  compunction 
and  the  embrace  of  forgiveness,  and  all  the  hidden  life  by 
which  the  soul  ascends  to  God. 

Here,  however,  we  are  carried  on  to  ground  which  no  natural 
philosopher  can  survey  for  us.  Looking  back  on  the  path 
which  has  led  us  thus  far,  we  meet,  in  the  three  great  modern 
discoveries,  respecting  the  space,  the  duration,  the  forces,  of 
the  cosmos,  with  nothing  to  disturb,  and  with  much  to  elevate 
and  glorify,  the  religious  interpretation  of  Nature ;  and, 
through  the  falling  away  of  puerile  conceptions,  at  once  to 
justify  and  to  harmonize  the  impressions  of  devout  minds  in 
every  age.  The  outward  world,  nevertheless,  is  not  the  school 
of  the  purest  and  deepest.  It  is  not  God's  characteristic  sphere 
of  self-exjjj'ession.  Eather  is  it  his  eternal  act  of  self-limitation ; 
of  abstinence  from  the  movements  of  free  affection  moment  by 
moment,  for  the  sake  of  a  constancy  that  shall  never  falter  or 
deceive.  The  finite  universe  is  thus  the  stooping  of  the 
■nfinite  Will  to  an  everlasting  self-sacrifice  ;  the  assumption  of 
[1,  patient  silence  by  the  Fountain-head  of  boundless  thought. 
The  silence  is  first  broken,  the  self-expression  comes  forth,  in 
the  moral  phenomena  of  our  life,  where  at  last  Spirit  speaks 
with  spirit,  and  the  passage  is  made  from  the  measured  steps 
of  material  usage  to  the  free  flight  of  spiritual  affection.  The 
world  reports  the  power,  reflects  the  beauty,  spreads  abroad 
the  majesty,  of  the  Supreme  Cause  ;  but  we  cannot  speak  of 
higher  attributes,  and  apprehend  the  positive  grounds  of  trust 
and  love,  without  entering  the  precincts  of  humanity. 


3? 


CHAPTER   II. 

GOD    IN    HUMANITY. 

When  we  wish  to  speak  of  the  world  as  a  system  ot 
estabhshed  order,  we  borrow  a  word  from  the  methods  of 
human  societ}^  and  say  that  it  is  a  reahn  of  laic.  The  term 
very  accurately  describes  movement  or  action  in  conjorndtij  witli 
rule,  and  restrained  icithin  definite  and  asaif/nable  condition-s ; 
and  this,  its  essential  meaning,  never  leaves  it  through  tlie 
whole  range  of  its  application.  It  is  curious,  however,  to 
observe  how  this  fundamental  idea,  as  it  passes  from  province 
to  province  of  the  universe,  takes  on  new  elements,  and 
embodies  itself  in  richer  forms.  Under  its  lowest  aspect,  we 
find  it  in  the  inorganic  and  insentient  world,  which  is  simply 
the  unconscious  theatre  of  its  presence.  The  water,  in  its 
cycle  from  sea  to  cloud,  from  cloud  to  snow,  from  snow  to 
stream,  that  finds  the  sea  again ;  the  foliage,  that  drops  in 
winter,  and  is  re-born  in  spring  ;  the  flower,  that  throws  its 
stamens  open  to  the  sun,  and  folds  them  from  the  chills  of 
night ;  the  curving  light,  that  shows  us  the  sun  before  he  has 
risen,  and  after  he  has  set,  and  softens  the  night  at  either 
end ;  the  gulf-stream,  that  warms  the  higher  latitudes,  and 
cools  the  tropic  seas, — all  these  constitute  an  order  which  they 
do  not  feel,  and  weave  a  web  of  relations  among  things  that 
do  not  see  each  other,  and  are  disposed  of  by  a  power  that 
uses  them  all  without  reporting  itself  to  any.  They  follow-  a 
law  which  is  made  for  them,  and  which,  without  consent  or 
recognition  of  theirs,  holds  them  in  unswerving  obedience. 
The  mind  in  which  their  order  is  original  does  not  enter  them 
except  as  force,  and  wields  them  only  as  the  diagrams  and 
apparatus  of  its  own  thought. 

When  law  takes  possession  of  Animal  Life,  it  plants  a 
power  of  higher  type  within,  and  estal)lislies  a  fuller  system 
of  relations.     Instinct,   everywhere  adaptive,  seems  to  take 


38  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

the  adjusting  activity  into  its  own  hands,  and  to  manage  its 
business  for  itself;  yet,  with  curious  partition  of  the  work, 
selects  the  means  without  preconception  of  the  end.  The 
moth,  which  deposits  its  eggs  on  the  only  plant  which  will 
feed  the  future  caterpillar,  or,  itself  vegetarian,  stores  around 
them  the  kind  of  chrysalis  which  its  larva  will  require ;  the 
salmon,  which  punctually  ascends  the  stream,  and  intrusts  its 
progeny  to  the  fresh  waters  in  which  itself  was  born  ;  the 
bird,  that  builds  and  hides  its  nest  on  the  ground,  or  under 
the  eaves,  or  pendent  from  the  bough,  and  seems  to  get  ready 
for  its  dangers  and  its  time ;  the  mother-ostriches,  that  club 
together  to  put  all  their  eggs  of  yesterday  into  one  nest,  under 
charge  of  a  male  bird,  and  all  those  of  to-morrow  into 
another ;  the  new-fledged  fly-catcher,  which  at  once  snaps, 
without  missing,  at  its  prey,  with  true  measure  of  the  distance, 
and  selection  of  the  kind ;  the  constructive  beaver,  the  civic 
ant,  the  co-operative  bee, — all  are  engaged  in  building  up  a 
balanced  organism  of  relations,  a  beneficent  interdependence, 
every  part  of  which,  even  that  which  they  directly  serve,  is 
wholly  beyond  their  cognizance.  They  are  not  left,  however, 
like  the  planet  in  its  orbit,  or  the  tidal  wave,  wholly  outside, 
as  merely  vehicles  of  the  order  they  display  :  their  conscious 
life  is  drawn  into  it ;  they  serve  it  with  their  feeling,  they 
advance  it  with  their  strength,  though  it  is  absent  from  their 
thought.  With  a  kind  of  incipient  partnership  in  the  economy 
of  the  world,  they  are  admitted  to  its  administration,  but  not 
to  its  counsels  ;  and  are  the  eager  executants  of  purposes  to 
which  they  are  blind.  Are  these  ends  absent,  are  they  non- 
existent, because  unknown  to  the  creatures  of  which  they 
dispose  ?  No  :  they  are  assembled  elsewhere  ;  and,  from  the 
perfection  of  the  divine  thought,  work  themselves  out  into 
realization,  through  the  pressure  of  countless  feelings,  con- 
verging upon  a  final  equilibrium  of  beauty  and  of  good. 

This  form  of  law  does  not  cease  with  the  tribes  below  us ; 
it  rises  into  our  nature,  and  occupies  in  it  all  the  functions 
which  our  life  has  in  common  with  theirs.  The  attempt  of 
philosophy  to  invest  us  with  a  constitution  violently  difi'erent 
from  theirs ;  to  make  everything  derivative  in  us  which  is 
original  in  them  ;  to  substitute  in  us,  for  their  spontaneous 


Chap.  II.]  GOD  IN  HUMANITY.  39 

passions,  the  trained  results  of  experience,  and  build  us  up 
out  of  associated  pains  and  pleasures  with  next  to  nothing 
ready-made,  is  a  wasted  artifice  of  ingenuity,  which  forces, 
stronger  than  argument,  will  forever  confute.  The  propen- 
sions  which  are  the  common  stock  of  all  animal  existence  ; 
the  passions  which  fence  it  from  its  foes ;  the  affections  which 
knit  it  to  its  kind,  plainly  enter  our  life  on  the  same  terms 
which  are  assigned  to  them  elsewhere,  and  equally  bear  upon 
them  the  stamp  of  instinctive  impulse  driving  blindly  to  its 
end.  Who  that  has  seen  and  laughed  at  the  passionate  boy, 
venting  disappointment  on  his  hoop  or  top,  as  well  as  on  his 
playmates,  can  fail  to  recognize  the  same  signs  which  appear  in 
every  provoked  creature, of  that  resentment  which  sj^rings  against 
sudden  harm,  and,  in  the  moment  of  danger,  invests  weakness 
with  preternatural  strength  ?  And  shall  we  admire,  as  pro- 
visions of  instinct,  the  maternal  cares  of  the  swallow  or  the 
hen,  and  break  the  analogy  when  the  same  conditions  light  up 
a  human  life  with  joy  and  love  and  patient  sacrifice  ?  Nay, 
even  when  we  take  account  of  tendencies  more  special  to  man, 
the  impulsive  and  spontaneous  character  which  distinguishes 
instinct  from  reflection  does  not  disappear.  "\\T.iat  more 
sudden  flash  can  burst  unbidden  into  the  soul  than  the 
kindling  of  pity  at  the  spectacle  of  woe  ?  It  is  but  an  appeal- 
ing look ;  and  in  the  twinklmg  of  an  63*6  the  seals  are  melted 
from  the  source  of  tears,  and  the  hand  is  seized  as  with  a 
spasm  of  succouring  strength.  It  is  the  instant  remedy  for 
instant  anguish ;  and  as  the  sorrows  of  this  world  often 
caimot  afford  to  wait,  so  is  there  ready  in  the  soul  a  balm 
swifter  than  reason,  and  more  healing  than  any  skill.  Tlie 
difference  between  man  and  his  companion-creatm-es  on  this 
earth  is  not  that  his  instinctive  life  is  less  than  theirs,  for,  in 
truth,  it  goes  far  beyond  them  ;  but  that  in  him  it  acts  in  the 
presence,  and  under  the  eye,  of  other  powers,  which  trans- 
form it,  and,  by  giving  to  it  vision  as  well  as  light,  take  its 
bluulness  away.  He  is  let  into  his  own  secrets  ;  though  he 
too  is  snatched  forward  toward  objects  given  to  his  nature, 
not  found  by  either  accident  or  art,  yet  he  has  this  distinc- 
tion :  that  he  marks  and  remembers  what  they  do  to  him ; 
and  when  thev  offer  themselves  again,  he  now  knows,  in  his 


40  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.        [Book  I. 

movement  towards  them,  whither  he  is  going ;  and  what 
before  was  a  drifting  in  the  dark,  becomes  a  passage  to  an 
end  foreseen.  It  is  this  change  of  theatre  for  the  natural 
instincts,  this  removal  of  their  life  on  to  an  illuminated  stage, 
where  they  have  to  act  their  parts  in  the  presence  of  higher 
direction, — this  it  is  which  adds  a  new  character  to  law,  when 
it  takes  possession  of  the  human  activities,  and  which  lifts  it 
at  once  from  natural  to  moral.  Other  beings  it  sways,  but 
does  not  consult.  Man  it  takes  into  complete  partnership 
with  it  and  treats  as  its  confidant.  Its  force  was  on  the 
l)lanet ;  its  feeling  in  the  animal ;  its  thought  is  in  man. 
Passing  thus  from  physical  to  ideal,  and  asking,  not  the 
obedience  of  matter,  but  the  assent  of  mind,  it  drops  its 
coercive  aspect,  reports  itself  as  duty,  without  the  enforcement 
of  necessity,  and  simply  leaves  with  the  soul  a  trust  of  power 
adequate  to  execute  its  ow'n  idea.  And  so  man  becomes  "  a 
law  unto  himself ;  "  not  that  he  makes  the  law  or  can  repeal 
it,  but  that  he  has  within  himself  the  resources  for  recogniz- 
ing it  and  for  obeying  it,  and  may  consciously  and  freely  co- 
operate with  that  appointed  order  by  which  other  natures  are 
swept  along  without  their  leave. 

Now,  how  is  this  change  in  the  character  of  law  brought 
about  on  its  transplantation  into  our  nature  ?  What  is  the 
provision  for  replacing  the  rectilinear  sequences  of  natural 
law  by  the  alternative  possibilities  of  moral  law  ?  In  what  form 
is  our  consent  asked  to  the  right,  and  the  warning  given 
against  the  wrong '?  And  by  what  constitution  of  mind  are 
we  quahfied  to  give  the  true  response  '?  Has  each  one  of  us, 
like  Socrates,  his  good  genius  attending  him,  with  voice  ever 
ready  to  check  the  incipient  aberration  ?  Or  have  we  a  certain 
special  sense  for  detecting  in  all  actions,  when  they  come 
before  us,  some  quality,  otherwise  occult,  that  distinguishes 
the  right  from  the  wrong  ?  Or  is  the  quality  not  occult  at 
all,  but  just  the  superior  pleasure  to  ourselves  or  others  of  the 
action  rightfully  preferred,  and  do  we  approve  by  admeasure- 
ment of  happy  results  ?  These  are  the  chief  doctrines  jjreva- 
lent  about  the  ultimate  ground  of  our  moral  sentiments.  The 
comparative  criticism  of  them  is  the  business  of  the  syste- 
matic moral  philosopher,  and  is  full  of  interest,  both  historical 


Chap.  II.]  COD  IN  HUMANITY.  41 

and  psychological.  But  it  would  take  us  to  our  end  by  a 
needless  circuit.  It  will  be  better  for  us  to  enter  for  ourselves 
the  field  of  ethical  phenomena,  regardless  of  all  its  preoccu- 
pation, to  consult  afresh  the  nature  on  which  we  have  to 
report,  and  simply  register  what  there  appears.  The  facts 
which  we  may  find  will  incidentally  controvert  the  fictions 
which  we  must  exclude,  and  furnish  a  criticism  while  dispens- 
ing with  the  critic.  "Where,  then,  is  the  exact  incidence,  and 
what  are  the  characteristics,  of  all  moral  judgment '? 

1.  Wlienever  we  pass  a  moral  judgment,  it  is  always  upon 
a  person,  and  not  upon  a  thing.  Both  of  these  may  affect  us 
agreeably  or  disagreeably,  may  be  received  with  welcome,  or 
rejected  with  dislike  ;  Init  the  admu'ation  or  aversion  awakened 
by  mere  things,  by  the  form  of  a  tree,  the  plumage  of  a  bird, 
by  disproportion  in  a  house,  or  cUscord  in  a  song,  are  totally 
distinct  from  moral  approval  and  disapproval.  Be  the  annoy- 
ance ever  so  great  wliich  we  suffer  from  these  impersonal 
objects,  be  the  tree  such  as  drew  down  the  humorous  impreca- 
tions of  Horace,  or  the  house  such  as  it  has  cost  us  dear  to 
mend,  we  are  simply  hurt  by  them,  not  angry  at  them.  And 
the  very  same  disasters  affect  us  differently  according  as  they 
are  or  are  not  believed  to  have  a  personal  origin ;  the  tile  that 
falls  and  womids  us  as  we  walk  brings  us  only  harm  from  the 
wind  of  accident ;  but  injury,  to  be  felt  as  such,  must  come 
from  the  hand  of  mischief.  Nay,  so  true  is  this,  that,  even 
in  the  case  of  acts  distinctly  human,  it  is  not  the  t]iin;i  done, 
but  the  2Jerson  doing,  not  the  product,  but  the  cause,  that  we 
are  impelled  to  judge.  The  same  deed  of  crime  may  issue 
from  a  dark,  neglected  nature,  and  from  one  luminous  and 
rich  with  the  discipline  of  Christian  opportunity  ;  but  our 
feeling  will  verge  towards  pity  in  the  one  case,  and  burn  with 
indignation  in  the  other.  And  so  when  some  sacrifice  of  love, — 
the  tending  of  the  sick,  the  support  of  the  orphan, — is  made  by 
the  poor,  whose  own  need  is  scarcely  less  severe,  and  whose 
struggle  might  be  held  to  excuse  from  such  devotedness,  we 
yield  to  it  a  homage  whicli  it  would  win  in  very  different 
degree  if  it  came  from  the  strong,  stooping  easily  to  help  the 
weak.  For  us,  it  is  invariably,  not  the  act,  liut  the  agent, 
that  is  mean  or  noble  :  him  it  is  that  we  despise  or  honour ; 


42  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  TV  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

apart  from  him,  and  looked  at  as  an  object  in  itself,  the  act 
offers  to  no  sense  or  faculty  of  ours  any  moral  quality  to  cast 
the  vote  of  our  approbation.  It  may  give  pain  or  pleasure  ; 
it  may  be  beautiful  or  ugly  ;  it  may  be  prolific  or  sterile ;  but 
cut  oft'  from  its  author,  and  treated  as  an  external  phenome- 
non, it  takes  its  place,  like  health  or  disease,  among  natural 
facts,  to  which  no  ethical  emotion  is  due. 

Instances,  indeed,  are  adduced,  in  which  we  seem  to  estimate 
outward  objects  in  terms  of  moral  appreciation.  For  example, 
we  may  "  approve  "  the  tone  of  a  picture,  the  proportion  of  a 
sculpture,  the  decorations  of  a  room ;  we  may  "  despise  "  a 
mincing  speech  or  a  tawdry  costume ;  and  the  surveyor  may 
"condemn"  a  fortress  or  a  frigate.  But  it  is  obvious  that 
here  we  have  only  a  figurative  transfer  of  ethical  language  to 
judgments  of  taste  and  utility  ;  and  that  the  feelings  expressed 
are  purely  festhetic  or  technical,  without  the  characteristics  of 
moral  sentiment.  And  the  cause  of  this  transference  is  not 
difficult  to  find.  It  is  limited  to  cases  where  an  end  is  aimed 
at,  and  a  choice  is  made ;  and  is  never  applied  to  the  given 
objects  of  nature,  which  lie  beyond  conceivable  variation. 
Works  of  fine  art,  and  structures  of  mechanical  skill,  are  pro- 
ducts of  will,  involving  alternative  possibilities,  and  resembling 
moral  action  in  carrying  a  better  and  a  worse  ;  and  hence  they 
draw  upon  them  the  same  preferential  language,  though  the 
thing  preferred  is  not  a  greater  righteousness,  but  a  greater 
beauty  or  a  greater  use.  The  personal  habits  and  creations, 
to  which  above  all  we  apply  this  phraseology,  are,  moreover, 
the  symbols  of  inward  character ;  and,  though  betraying 
primarily  no  more  than  its  cast  of  imagination,  suggest  by 
implication  the  probable  presence  of  a  corresponding  type  of 
ethical  preference.  It  is  still,  therefore,  not  upon  the  phe- 
nomenon itself,  but  upon  the  personal  source,  that  the  sentence 
of  our  feeling  is  passed. 

2.  "We  must  then  enter  the  precincts  of  the  agent's  person- 
ality in  order  to  scrutinize  more  nearly  the  precise  point  on 
which  our  moral  appreciation  settles.  His  action  we  may 
resolve  into  the  three  main  elements  of  its  history  ;  viz.,  the 
impulse  whence  it  starts,  the  movements  which  execute  it, 
and  the  effects  that  follow  it.     No  one  can  let  his  attention 


Chap.  II.]  COD   IN  HUMANITY.  43 

rest  for  a  moment  on  each  of  these,  without  confessing  that  it 
is  t\ie  first  alone  which  we  approve  or  condemn,  and  which  we 
accept  as  an  expression  of  character.  So  long  as  this 
remains,  and  the  spring  of  action  has  not  changed  its  decree, 
our  praise  or  hlame  will  stand ;  though,  l^y  some  arrest  of 
execution,  the  intention  is  frustrated  at  its  birth,  or,  by  a 
change  of  outward  conditions,  the  consequences  are  reversed. 
The  holy  purpose,  broken  off  by  paralj-sis  of  limb,  or  inter- 
rupted by  sudden  death,  kindles  our  reverence  as  much  as  the 
highest  triumphs  of  successful  will ;  and  those  whose  designs 
of  love  are  blotted  out  in  the  darkness  of  some  Calvarj^  are 
none  the  less  venerated  as  saviours  b}-  the  world.  And  who 
does  not  own  the  defence  of  Demosthenes  to  be  just,  that  tiie 
patriot  and  statesman  is  not  to  be  judged  Ijy  the  event,  Ijut 
may  yet  have  his  claim  on  gratitude  from  a  ruined  countrj-, 
and  amid  the  wreck  of  baffled  plans?  Take  away,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  initial  term,  and  suppose  the  same  succession 
of  events  to  complete  itself  by  other  means  than  the  origi- 
nating purpose ;  and  the  phenomenon,  thus  mechanically 
accomplished,  slips  at  once  from  ethical  into  natural  history  ; 
and,  bring  what  it  may  of  good  or  ill,  it  commands  no  love, 
and  justifies  no  indignation.  "Without  its  prefix  of  impelling 
affection,  the  executive  activities  are  but  a  muscular  spasm  ; 
and,  though  they  were  to  conjure  up  all  imaginable  felicities, 
would  be  as  little  praiseworthy  as  the  sunshine  and  the  rain. 
We  conclude,  then,  that  the  moral  quality  lies  exclusively  in 
the  inner  spring,  of  which  the  act  is  born. 

3.  Yet,  if  there  were  onlii  one  such  spring  of  action 
implanted  in  our  nature,  or  allowed  scope  in  our  opportuni- 
ties, it  would  be  no  object  of  ethical  judgment.  Wlio,  for 
instance,  could  condemn  any  fury  of  resentment,  if  that 
passion  had  the  soul  entirely  to  itself,  and  there  were  no 
opposing  pleadings  pressing  to  be  heard  ?  or  any  voracity  of 
appetite,  if  all  consciousness  were  swallowed  up  in  hunger  ? 
The  creatures  below  us  are-  apparently  not  far  from  tliis 
condition  :  they  seem  to  be  actually  taken  up  l)y  instinct 
after  instinct,  each  in  its  turn,,  as  if  there  were  no  other. 
They  have,  therefore,  no  problem  ;  and  nothing  is  possible  to 
them  but  to  become  the  organs  of  each  present  affection,  and 


44  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

let  it  hand  them  over  to  the  next.  It  is  precisely  because 
this  is  not  the  condition  of  our  world,  because  no  man  is  ever 
noble  without  the  opportunity  of  l^eing  base,  or  the  slave  of 
a  false  service  without  the  offer  of  a  true,  that  we  look  on 
human  character  as  on  an  eventful  drama,  full  of  crises  of 
suspense,  and,  as  we  watch  the  stage,  have  our  hearts  ever 
charged  with  a  sacred  anger  or  a  thankful  joy.  When, 
therefore,  on  seeing  a  human  impulse  break  into  life  and 
claim  the  neld,  we  clap  our  hands,  and  cry,  "  Well  done  !  " 
we  always  see  a  rival  near  ;  and,  knowing  what  conflict  there 
may  have  been  behind  the  scenes,  w^elcome  the  victor  as  from 
a  battle  won. 

4.  If  this  be  so,  if  it  be  on  these  conditions  that  our  moral 
judgments  are  passed,  one  weighty  controversy  may  be  at 
once  discharged.  Where,  it  has  been  asked,  is  the  birth- 
place, where  the  earliest  school,  of  our  moral  sentiments  ? 
Do  we  gather  them  from  the  influence  of  our  fellow-men  ? 
Are  they  the  infection  of  education,  the  copy  of  social 
opinion  ?  Are  they  imposed  upon  us  by  the  will  of  prede- 
cessors and  companions,  mere  rules,  made  in  their  interest, 
and  enforced  by  the  sanction  of  their  power  ?  Or  are  they 
native  to  our  own  mind,  and  a  true  home-growth  upon  the 
personal  field  ?  In  other  words,  are  the  primary  verdicts 
passed  upon  our  fellows,  or  upon  ourselves "?  One  simple 
test  would  seem  to  decide  this  question.  If  the  moral  criti- 
cism express  the  view  we  take  of  others'  conduct,  if  it  is  from 
this  as  a  beginning  that  our  sentiments  of  right  build  them- 
selves up,  they  must  fasten  their  approval  or  contempt  upon 
what  an  observer  can  see  and  feel  of  the  action  which  they 
judge, — upon  its  visible  characteristics  of  good  and  ill.  Not 
till  it  has  quitted  the  agent's  personality,  and  has  gone 
abroad  into  the  light,  charged  with  benefit  or  injury,  will  it 
be  qualified  to  earn  our  praise  or  reprobation.  We  have 
seen,  however,  that  it  is  by  no  means  to  these  outwardly 
perceptible  features  of  its  history,  but  exclusively  to  its 
hidden  springs  within,  that  our  sentence  addresses  itself: 
there  alone  it  is  that  we  discern  the  clean  and  unclean,  the 
worthy  and  the  base.  Where,  then,  do  we  learn  these  appre- 
ciations ■?     What  should  we  know  of  these  viewless  seats  cf 


Chap.  II.]  GOD   IN  HUMANITY.  45 

character  if  we  could  only  look  out  of  our  eyes  at  the  move- 
ments of    other  men  ?      How   could  we  ever    interpret    the 
moral  meanmg  of  these  signs,  any  more  than  a  bird  could 
understand  the  tears  of  compmiction,  or  the  uplifted  look  of 
prayer,  if  the  key  were  not  within  us,  in  the  motive  affections 
of  our  own  hearts '?     It  is  on  the  home  enclosure,  within  the 
private  plot  of  our  own  consciousness,  that  we  make  acquaint- 
ance with  the  springs  of  action,  and  are  forced  to  see  them  as 
they  are ;  and  if  here  it  is  that  we  discern  the  sacredness  and 
the  sin,   our  primary  school  of  morals  lies  within  ourselves, 
and  we    may  dismiss,    as    a   play   of    ingenious   fiction,    all 
attempts  to  explain  our  own  conscience    as  a    reflection  of 
other  men's  looks,  and  to  elaborate  the  delicate  sanctities  of 
private  duty  out  of  the  coarse  fibre  of  public  self-interest. 
That  our  fellows  make  demands  upon  us,  that  they  expect  us 
to  be  just  and  true  and  merciful,  is  a  secondary  phenomenon, 
which  could  have  no  place  did  they  not  presume  us  first  to 
make  the  demand  upon  ourselves  ;  and  their  suffrages,  how- 
ever coercive,  would  speak  to  us  with  no  inward  weight  did 
they  not  issue  from  a  moral  apprehension  like  our  own,  and 
reproduce  from  kindred  witnesses  the  verdict,  or  the  surmises, 
of   our  hearts.     The  theor}-  is    not  only  an  opprobrium    to 
philosophy,  but  a  poison  to  the  world,  which  assumes  that,  to 
begin  with,  men  know  nothing  Init    the    sentient  difference 
between  pleasure  and  pain  ;  and  set  themselves,  in  default  of 
distinctions  more  august,  to  work  it  up  by  artifice  into  sem- 
blance  of    a  thing    divine,  virtually  sa\-ing   to   each    other, 
"  See  !  there  is  no  conscience  here.     Come,  let  us  make  an 
image  in  its  likeness,  and  build  it  of  the  cla}'  of  our  own 
wishes,  an.d  gild  it  over  as  a  god ;  and  we  will  set  it  on  the 
plain,  where  all  men  shall  see  it,  and  at  the  sound  of  our 
trumpet  they  shall  bow  down  and  worship  it."     "When  such 
illusions  have  come  to  the  end  awaiting  all    idolatries,   we 
shall  return  to  the  simpler  speech  of  less  ingenious  times : 
''  Brothers,  we  have  all  one  conscience  here.     Come,  let  us 
confess  together  what  it  would  have  from  us  ;  and,  to  help  its 
weakness  in  each,  let  us  declare  its  claims  on  all,  and  gather 
the  divine  voices,  scattered  as  they  are,  into  a  chorus  of  right 
for  our  community. ■■     Society,  once  tempted  by  flattery  to 


46  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  1. 

believe  itself  the  source  of  moral  law,  is  ever  sliding  towards 
dissolution  ;  but,  while  reverently  living  as  its  product  and 
its  organ,  becomes  ever  firmer  and  more  glorious. 

5,  If  it  be  the  inner  spring  of  action  to  which  all  ethical 
quality  attaches, — and  even  then,  only  on  condition  that  it  is 
not  there  alone, — our  moral  constitution  reduces  itself  to  the 
simplest  form  :  it  stands  clear  at  once  of  every  mystery,  and 
•  of  every  arbitrary  pretension  supposed  to  be  chargeable  on  the 
doctrine  of  a  moral  faculty.  It  is  all  contained  in  this :  that, 
as  the  instinctive  impulses  turn  up  within  us,  one  after 
another,  and  two  or  more  come  into  presence  of  each  other, 
they  report  to  us  their  relative  worth ;  and  we  intuitively 
Iniow  the  better  from  the  worse.  The  hungry  child,  who  is 
ready  to  satisfy  his  appetite  without  a  restraining  thought,  no 
sooner  falls  in  with  some  Lazarus,  fainting  with  starvation, 
than  he  feels  in  a  moment  the  higher  claim  of  pity,  and  either 
parts  with  the  untasted  meal,  or,  if  not,  finds  it  made  bitter 
by  compunction.  An  irascible  mother,  fretted  with  her  cares, 
and  venting  herself  upon  the  nearest  vexation,  strikes  her 
idiot  1)oy,  and  he  falls  beneath  the  unintelligible  wound. 
"With  what  instant  anguish  does  she  know  how  much  meaner 
is  the  anger  she  has  indulged  than  the  compassion  she  has 
forgot !  Such  examples  are  ty]3es  of  all  our  native  self-judg- 
ments. And  the  consciousness  we  have  of  the  I'elative 
excellence  of  the  several  instincts  and  affections  which 
compete  for  our  will — a  consciousness  inseparable  from  the 
experience  of  each  as  it  comes  into  comparison  with  another, 
but  incomplete  till  we  have  rung  the  changes  on  them  all — is 
neither  more  nor  less  than  conscience.  The  moral  faculty, 
therefore,  is  not  any  apprehension  of  invisible  qualities  in 
external  actions,  not  any  partition  of  them  into  the  absolutely 
good  and  absolutely  evil,  not  any  intellectual  testing  of 
them  by  rules  of  congruity,  or  balances  of  utility,  but  a 
recognition,  at  their  very  source,  of  a  scale  of  relative 
values  lying  within  ourselves,  and  introducing  a  preferential 
character  throughout  the  countless  combinations  of  our  pos- 
sible activity.  I  will  presently  consider  what  is  the  nature, 
and  what  the  religious  significance,  of  that  moral  authority 
which  thus  opens  upon  us.     But,  before  proceeding  to  this 


Chap.  II.]  GOD   L\   HUMANITY.  47 

topic,  I  would  pause  for  a  moment  on  a  single  aspect  of  our 
exposition. 

From  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind  which  we  have 
traced,  we  see  how  it  is  that  all  great  moral  natures  instinc- 
tively turn  inwards ;  and  by  their  native  thirst  for  dirine 
knoidedge  are  carried  to  the  fountains  of  sclf-knoivledge. 
There  it  is,  in  the  secret  glades  of  thought  and  motive,  that 
the  springs  of  life  arise,  and  the  distinctive  lights  and  shadows 
of  good  and  ill  are  seen  to  play  ;  and  thither  is  the  soul 
invariably  led  by  the  genius  of  duty.  Even  amid  the  brilliant 
distractions  of  Athens,  it  was  to  this  centre  that  Socrates 
retreated  from  the  speculations  of  science,  and  the  dazzling 
ambitions  of  men,  and  disciplined  himself  to  be  the  martyr  of 
the  first  ethical  philosophy,  and  the  father  of  all  others. 
Under  the  weight  of  empire,  it  was  the  chief  care  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  to  commune  with  his  own  heart ;  and  from  that 
silent  converse  he  brought  a  strength  and  harmony  of  virtue 
which  shames  the  whole  calendar  of  saints.  Ai3  soon  as  the 
religion  of  Christ  had  had  time  to  make  itself  felt,  and  to  fix 
its  spirit  legibly  in  the  hymn,  the  prayer,  the  literature,  of  the 
faith,  the  unsuspected  contents  of  the  human  soul  seemed  to 
pour  themselves  forth  in  a  flood  of  pathetic  confession,  and  to 
open  resources  for  a  new  and  deeper  drama  of  life.  And, 
compare  where  we  will  the  expression  of  ancient  and  of  modern 
civilization,  in  their  epics,  their  tragedies,  their  art,  or  their 
philosophy,  the  relative  interest  of  the  outward  world  pales  in 
the  later  ages  before  the  inner  mysteries  of  our  own  nature. 
The  broad  canvas  of  history  fascinates  us  less  than  the 
cabinet  portrait  of  biography  with  its  silent  lips  and  meaning 
eyes  ;  and,  through  the  pomp  of  statesmanship  and  the  din 
of  revolution,  we  pierce  with  eager  search  to  the  play  of 
individual  passion  and  the  conflict  of  personal  character. 
This  reflective  tendency,  this  retirement  within,  is  due  to  the 
hidden  sense  rather  than  the  open  discovery  that  here  is  the 
true  seat  of  law, — the  place  of  judgment,  whence  there  is  110 
appeal.  And  hence  it  is  never  in  light  mood,  with  noisy  and 
jaunty  step,  but  with  huslied  lirratli,  and  on  the  tiptoe  of 
silence,  that  we  draw  near  to  look  into  these  inner  circles  of 
the  soul.     Elsewhere,  we  can   go  familiarlv  in  and  out,  and 


48  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Rook  I. 

take  our  notes  of  what  we  find,  without  disturbance  to  tlie 
humour  of  the  hour  :  but  ilierc  we  Ivnow  tliere  is  a  sanctuary  ; 
and  ere  we  reacli  it,  an  invisible  incense  breathes  upon  our 
hearts,  and  subdues  us  into  involuntary  worship.  While  the 
mere  external  study  of  men,  the  scrutiny  of  them  by  intel- 
lectual eye-sight,  is  the  constant  source  of  cynical  illusion, 
meditative  self-knowledge  is  the  true  school  of  reverence,  oi 
sympathy,  of  hope,  of  immovable  humility  ;  for  there  we  see, 
side  by  side,  what  we  are  and  what  we  ought  to  be ; — and  of 
unquenchable  aspiration  ;  for  there  too  we  meet,  spirit  to 
spirit,  the  almighty  Holiness  that  lifts  us  to  himself. 

It  is  true,  however,  that   the  self-lmowledge  which  is  the 
special  prerogative  of  man  is  his  latest,  as  it  is  his  highest, 
gain.     And  hence  the  simple  program  of  his  moral  nature, 
though  living  in  him  m  lines  of  light,  remains  unread  ;  and 
its  very  existence  is  as  much  disputed  as  if  it  were  invisible. 
There  is  nothing  surprising  in  this.     The  truth  is  too  near  for 
the  average  eye  to  see  it ;  and  the  vision,  accommodated  to 
outward  things,  overlooks  what  presses  more  closely  on  itself. 
If  men  could  be  quietly  consulted  one  by  one,  taken  into  the 
closet  of  some  Socratic   questioner,  schooled  in  reaching  the 
confessional  of  thought,  they  would  readily  be  made  aware  of 
their  inward  discernment  of  ethical    differences  among  their 
incentives,  and  would  OAvn  a  law  of  God  written  on  the  heart. 
Were  there  only  this  private  witness  of  personal  consciousness, 
the  evidence  would  seem  to  be  all  one  way.     But  they  go  out 
into  the  public    streets,  and  watch  the  variegated  stream  of 
population  intent  on  different  ends ;  they  frequent  the  courts, 
and   listen   to  the  contending  pleas   for   a   right    suspended 
between  two    suitors  ;  they  observe  a  nation,  whose  noblest 
citizens  confront  each  other  under  the  opposite  banners  of  law 
and  revolution  ;  they  scrutinize   history,  and  find  the  sanc- 
tioned usages  of  one  age  become  the  crimes  of  another  ;  and, 
amid  the  din  of  this   distracted   field,  the   authority  which 
looked  so  clear  within  seems  lost  in  lawlessness  without :  all 
uniformity  of  rule  is  broken   up,   and  of   any  consentaneous 
moral  faculty   scarce  a  trace  remains.      The  throng  of  con- 
flicting phenomena  gives  noisy  answer  to  the   silent  inward 
pleadmgs  ;  and  the  secret  conviction  of  a  divine  order,  known 


Chap.  II.]  GOD  IN  HUMANITY.  49 

to  all,  is  beaten  down  by  the  confusion  of  the  world.  Where, 
it  is  asked,  is  the  pretended  intuition  of  the  right  in  a  race 
which,  by  turns,  has  consecrated  every  wrong  ?  What  is  the 
use  of  a  moral  faculty  which,  if  it  can  sleep  while  a  Caligula 
or  a  Borgia  triumphs,  and  saints  are  hunted  down  by 
inquisitors,  and  superstition  plays  off  its  pitiless  cruelties,  is 
no  better  than  a  moral  incapacity  ?  \Vlio  would  trust  himself 
to  the  conscience  of  an  African  savage  or  a  Mexican  chief '? 
Is  it  not  plain  that  a  standard  which  is  constant  for  no  two 
places  or  times  must  be  the  arbitrary  creation  of  social 
necessity,  the  crystallization  of  traditional  i^rejudice  and 
usage,  passing  from  the  public  fashion  into  the  private  feeling, 
and  calling  itself  indigenous  there,  because  not  knowing 
whence  it  is  '? 

These  considerations  would  have  great  weight  against  any 
doctrine  of  conscience  which  set  it  up  as  an  infallible  oracle, 
able  to  pronounce  at  sight  on  the  ethical  character  of  external 
actions.  Men,  under  such  guidance,  would  have  their  moral 
perceptions  perfect  at  once,  and  uniform  everywhere,  and 
could  add  nothing  by  way  of  growth  or  history,  except  so  far 
as,  with  changing  conditions,  new  lines  of  possible  action 
came  before  them.  But  if  conscience  is  withdrawn  altogether 
from  the  criticism  of  outward  action,  if  it  be  taken  simply  for 
the  sense  we  have  of  a  better  and  worse  among  our  inward 
springs  of.  conduct,  not  only  is  its  existence  compatible  with 
the  conflicting  judgments  of  mankind  and  the  cross-lights  on 
the  field  of  history,  but  it  affords  the  shnplest  key  to  these, 
showing  precisely  how  they  arise,  and  exhibiting  them  as  the 
direct  and  inevitable  consequence  of  the  very  plan  of  our 
mental  constitution.     For  instance  : — 

1.  The  limited  range  of  conscience  among  barbarous  tribes 
and  people  everywhere  of  immature  humanit}'  is  precisely 
what  we  should  expect,  when  we  remember  how  few  are  the 
inliuences  which  have  play  in  their  life ;  and  how  scanty, 
therefore,  is  the  set  of  moral  differences  to  which  their  feeling 
has  yet  been  introduced.  Our  nature  opens  and  turns  out  its 
forces  only  by  degrees.  There  is  an  infancy  for  the  race  as 
well  as  for  the  individual ;  and,  as  nearly  one-third  of  life 
must  pass  ere  the  child  succeeds  to  the  passions  and  problems 

£ 


50  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

of  the  man,  so,  in  the  first  attempt  at  society,  and  in  its  more 

retired  parts,  a  large  proportion  of  the  hmnan  dynamics  sleep. 

A  small  nmnber  of  private  instincts   and   affections   appear 

upon  the  stage,  and  conduct  the  action  of   the  piece ;    and 

since,  even  of  these,  one  is  usually  off  before  another  is  on, 

the  inner  life  is  rather  a  succession  than  a  conflict  of  powers  ; 

and  there  is  little  of  that  comparison  and  strife  of  incentives 

from  which  the  moral  self-consciousness  is  born.     The  Indian 

who,  in  a  fit  of  suspicion,  takes  the  life  of  his  faithful  wife  or 

son,  discovers  with  remorse  how  much  nobler  is  the  affection 

he  has  insulted  than  the  fear  he  has  obeyed.     Or,  perhaps,  in 

the  hot  blood  of  victor}^  he  tortures  his  captive   till   some 

look  of  piteous  agony  pierces  to  the  seat  of  pity  in  his  heart, 

and  he  finds  something  to  which  revenge  itself  must  yield. 

But  among  these  rudiments  of  a  moral  life,  his  years  of  simple 

experience  pass  away,  and  all  the  higher  terms  on  the  scale 

of  human  incentive  remain  undiscovered  overhead,  so  that  the 

very   materials   are   invisible   of    the   problems   which    they 

present ;  and  to  seek  a  verdict  on  them  from  his  moral  sense 

would  be  like  carrying  into  the  nursery  questions  of  political 

libel  or  international  law.     Within  the  narrow  circle  of  his 

existence,  so  far  as  it  has  emerged  from  the   dominion   of 

successive  instincts,  and  fallen  under  the  rules  of  a  comparing 

consciousness,  I  do  not  think  it  can  be  shown  that  he  mistakes 

or  inverts  the  claims  of  his  few  natural  affections. 

2.  The  apparent  discrepancies  of  ethical  judgment  by  which, 
in  different  societies,  the  hero  and  the  criminal  change  places, 
are  also  the  necessary  result  of  the  unequal  development  of  a 
uniform  moral  consciousness.  To  convince  ourselves  of  this, 
we  have  only  to  remember  that  every  verdict  of  approval  is 
passed,  not  upon  the  action,  but  on  its  spring ;  and  is,  more- 
over, not  absolute,  but  simply  relative  and  preferential.  "When- 
ever, therefore,  you  try  to  settle  the  worth  of  any  case  of 
conduct,  your  eye  fastens  at  once  upon  the  feeling  whence  it 
has  obviously  sprung ;  and  this,  for  the  purposes  of  estimate, 
you  set  side  by  side  with  that  other  feeling  which  you  take  to 
be  its  alternative,  sure  to  have  the  field  if  its  competitor  with- 
draws. Our  sentence  of  approval,  then,  though  it  bears  an 
absolute  look,  and  only  says,   "  The  thing  is  right,'"  really 


Chap.  Ilj  COD  IN  HUMANITY.  51 

means  no  more  than  the  comparative  decision,  "  This  is  better 
than  f/iai."     Supi^ose  that,  meanwhile,  I  have  been  pondering 
the  same  case ;  that  I  have  referred  it,  hke  yourseU",  to  its 
true  incentive ;  but  that  I  have  imagined  a  different  alterna- 
tive, and  therefore  instituted  a  different  comparison,  not,  as 
in  your  deliberations,  with  the  term  immediately  belo\Y,  but 
with  the  term  immediately  above  :  is  it  any  wonder  that  I 
contradict  you,  and  say,  "  The  thing  is  wrong  "?     And  is  it 
not  plain  that,  flat  as  the  contradiction  seems,  it  is  not  real  ? 
since  my  assertion  that  B.  is  worse  than  C.  is  no  reply  to 
yours,  that  B.  is  better  than  A.     To  both  of  us,  by  the  very 
constitution  of  our  nature,  a  suppressed  term  of  comparison 
is  indispensable  ;  and  if  that  term  should  be  not  the  same  for 
you  and  for  me,  our  minds  will  never  meet,  and  we  shall 
deliver  judgments  on  different  problems,  though  in  form  the 
one  decree  affirms  precisely  what  the  other  denies.     I  know  of 
no  seeming  discordances  of    ethical   opinion    which  do   not 
readily   resolve    themselves    under   the    application   of    this 
formula.     Nothing   is   more   revolting   to   us   in    the   Greek 
civilization  than  the  sacrifice  of  the  weakly  and  infirm  by  the 
exposure  of  infants  and  the  cutting  off  of  the  old.     We  treat 
it  as  sheer  inhumanity  and  irreverence,  selfishly  inflicted  on 
helpless  victims  in  riddance  of  a  burden  of  troublesome  but 
sacred  cares.     We  carry  to  it  our  Christian  estimate  of  the 
individual  soul  and  its  trust  of  life, — a  trust  which  no  maimed 
conditions,  no  sorrowful  lot,  no  waiting  for  release,  can  ever 
cancel  or  disappoint :  we  think  how  large  a  part  of  social  duty 
is  constituted  by  the  humanities  which  shelter  the  weak  and 
nurse  the  sick  and  care  for  them  that  have  none  to  help ;  and 
that  all  this  should  be  cast  awa}^  in  order  that  the  strong  may 
be  stronger,  and  lives  too  brilliant  should  lose  their  shadows, 
fills  us  with  indignant  horror.     But  in  this  we  proceed  upon 
comparisons  which  w^ere  impossible  to  the  Greek ;  whilst  he 
acted  on  a  view  of  the  world  impossible  to  us.    Life,  death,  the 
world,  the  individual,  stood  before  him  in  relations  which  have 
passed   from  our  sympathy, — almost  from  our  apprehension. 
He  inverted  our  order  of  reverence.     The  State  was  to  embody 
for  him  the  divine  perfection  of  the  cosmos,  and  its  single 
components  were  to  be  used  like  the  seed-corn,  or  burned  like 

E  2 


52  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

the  weeds,  according  as  they  could  adorn  it  with  the  beauty  of 
their  growth,  or  cleanse  it  by  their  swift  decay.  He  recog- 
nized no  rights  in  the  personal  life  which  could  stand  up 
against  the  wholesomeness  of  the  community  ;  and  no  duties, 
except  to  yield  itself  unreservedly  as  the  organ,  or  remove  itself 
as  the  obstruction,  of  the  pubhc  good.  For  one  who  was  dis- 
abled from  serving  the  commonwealth,  there  was  no  trust,  no 
sacredness,  no  business,  here :  he  could  remain  only  to  discover 
himself  a  cumberer  of  the  ground  ;  and  it  was  not  only  per- 
mitted, but  required,  whether  from  himself  or  from  others,  as 
guardians  of  the  perfection  of  the  world,  that  he  should  quit 
the  scene  which  he  deformed.  In  this  view  the  sacrifice  was 
made,  not  to  self  and  private  ease,  but  to  an  ideal  of  public 
good  and  divine  order ;  and  the  thmg  sacrificed  was  not  that 
solemn  opportunity,  that  inalienable  trust,  which  to  us  the 
probationary  plot  must  ever  be  of  even  the  poorest  cottiers  in 
this  husbandry  of  God,  but  a  mere  shipwrecked  position  on 
barren  sands,  where  not  a  green  thing  would  grow,  and  the 
circling  sea  cut  oft'  the  continents  of  hope  and  love.  The 
terms  of  the  comparison,  and  the  conditions  of  the  problem  in 
the  ancient  and  the  modern  mind  being  thus  different,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  answers  seemingly  conflicting  are  given  to  ques- 
tions really  different. 

In  truth,  it  is  only  by  thus  retiring  inward  to  the  precon- 
ceptions and  sentiments  from  which  action  is  assumed  to 
spring  ;  only,  therefore,  by  consulting  the  moral  consciousness 
itself,  that  these  startling  contrarieties  of  judgment  can  at  all 
be  understood.  If  we  went  by  the  external  effects  of  action 
alone,  approving  of  what  did  good,  condemning  what  did 
harm,  it  would  be  much  more  difficult  to  explain  the  violent 
revolutions  of  ethical  opmion.  For  the  outward  consequences 
do  not,  like  the  inner  springs,  change  their  adjustment  and 
relation  from  age  to  age :  they  are  palpable  and  measurable 
alike  to  the  ancient  and  the  modern,  to  Aristotle  and  to  Mill ; 
and  if  the  materials  and  the  method  of  solution  were  thus 
impartially  present  to  all  observers,  the  opposite  answers 
would  hopelessly  perplex  us,  and  would  but  hand  over  the 
imputation  against  the  consistency  of  conscience  to  stand  as 
a  charge  against  the  uniformity  of  reason. 


Chap.  II.]  GOD   IN  HUMANITY.  S3 

3.  The  gradual  growth  of  moral  discernment,  and  the  mode 
in  which  it  takes  place,  are  also  what  we  should  expect  from 
the  preferential  character  ascribed  to  it.  Till  a  spring  of 
action  appears  upon  the  field  and  disputes  possession  of  us  with 
another,  it  has  no  place  in  our  estimate  at  all ;  and  when  it 
has  begun  to  visit  us,  it  has  to  pass  through  its  circle  of  com- 
parisons with  prior  occupants  before  it  can  fall  into  order  with 
the  rest.  We  are  far  on  in  our  career  before  the  whole  of 
even  the  primitive  series  of  impulses,  e.  g.,  the  parental  affec- 
tion, can  have  found  us  out.  And,  by  various  partnerships 
among  these,  as  well  as  by  conversion,  through  our  self-con- 
sciousness, of  the  instinctive  into  the  prudential,  new  and 
mixed  incentives  (e.  g.,  the  love  of  power,  the  sense  of  veracity, 
devotion  to  our  country)  are  perpetually  added,  so  as  to  enrich 
the  contents  of  our  nature  and  enlarge  the  scope  of  our  moral 
existence.  And  what  is  it  that  quickens  these  elements  into 
life  ?  Is  it  in  solitude  that,  like  bubbles  set  free  from  the 
bottom  of  some  sleeping  pool,  they  one  by  one  rise  to  the 
surface  ?  No  :  it  is  in  the  eddy  and  the  flow  of  life,  as  it  chafes 
in  its  channel,  and  is  turned  by  the  rock,  and  ventures  its 
leap,  that  all  the  force  and  the  effervescence  come  out.  We 
find  our  proper  personality  only  in  society  ;  and  it  is  by 
exposure  to  the  light  of  other  consciences  that  the  colours  of 
our  own  steal  forth.  Especially  is  it  the  play  of  inequality  in 
the  characters  around  us,  the  repulsion  of  those  below,  the 
attraction  of  those  above,  our  level,  that  wakes  up  the  forces 
of  our  proper  nature,  and,  by  compelling  us  to  define  our 
aspirations,  turns  the  blind  tracks  of  habit  into  the  luminous 
path  of  a  spiritual  career.  Am  I  thrown  among  associates 
who  breathe  a  lower  atmosphere,  and  who  appeal  to  incentives 
which  in  my  heart  I  cannot  honour  as  the  best  ?  My  secret 
ideal  stands  before  me  as  it  never  did  before ;  and,  in  my 
compunction  if  I  am  weak,  in  my  resolution  if  I  am  strong, 
its  authority  looks  down  upon  me  with  living  eyes  of  pity  or 
of  help.  Am  I  admitted  into  the  company  of  greater  and 
purer  men,  who  move  among  the  upper  springs  of  life  ;  who 
aim  at  what  had  scarcely  visited  my  dreams  ;  who  hold  them- 
selves, with  freest  sacrifice,  at  the  disposal  of  affections  known 
to  me  only  by  momentary  flash  ;  who  rise  above  the  fears  that 


^.  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

darken  me,  and  do  the  duties  that  shame  me,  and  bear  the 
sorrows  that  break  me  down  ?  The  whole  secret  and  sanctity 
of  life  seem  to  burst  upon  me  at  once  ;  and  I  find  how  near 
the  ground  is  the  highest  I  have  touched,  and  how  the  steps 
of  possibility  ascend,  and  pass  away,  and  lose  themselves  in 
heaven.  This  is  the  discipline,  this  the  divine  school,  for  the 
unfolding  of  our  moral  nature, — the  appeal  of  character  with- 
out to  character  within.  The  sacred  poem  of  our  own  hearts, 
with  its  passionate  hymns,  its  quiet  prayers,  is  svrit  in  invisible 
ink ;  and  only  when  the  lamp  of  other  lives  brings  its  warm 
light  near  do  the  lines  steal  out,  and  give  their  music  to  the 
voice,  their  solemn  meaning  to  the  soul.  In  this  sense  of 
interdependence  we  do,  undoubtedly,  owe  our  moral  sentiment 
largely  to  others  ;  but  only  because  they,  too,  bear  tliat  about 
them  which  we  revere  or  abhor,  and  their  character  serves  as 
the  mirror  of  our  own.  In  a  icorld  morally  constituted,  where 
the  authority  of  conscience  has  at  least  its  implicit  presence 
in  every  mind,  the  ethical  action  and  re-action  of  men  upon 
each  other  will  be  infinite,  and  will  so  far  prevail  over  the 
solitary  force  of  the  individual  nature,  that  no  one,  however 
exceptionally  great,  will  escape  all  relation  to  the  general  level 
of  his  time.  The  dependence,  then,  of  the  moral  consciousness 
for  its  growth  upon  society  is  incident  to  its  very  nature.  But 
to  suppose,  on  this  account,  that,  if  it  ivere  not  there  at  all, 
society  could  generate  it,  and,  by  skilful  financing  with  the 
exchanges  of  pleasure  and  pain,  could  turn  a  sentient  world 
into  a  moral  one,  will  never  cease  to  be  an  insolvent  theory, 
which  makes  provision  for  no  obligation  :  never,  so  long  as  it 
is  true  that  out  of  nothing  nothing  comes. 

4.  As  the  growth  of  conscience,  so  its  decline  takes  place  in 
the  manner  we  should  expect,  if  it  be  a  natural  valuation  of 
our  springs  of  action  as  they  arise.  When  some  affection 
higher  than  your  wont  has  dawned  upon  you,  and  claimed  you 
with  its  divine  appeal,  if  you  simply  recognize  the  call,  and, 
cost  what  it  may,  go  whither  it  may  lead,  though  the  feet  may 
bleed  and  the  strength  may  droop,  your  mind  is  clear  with  a 
new  serenity  and  repose.  The  tension  of  anxiety  is  gone,  the 
care  for  opinion  dies  away,  and,  by  this  step  of  elevation,  you 
pass  into  harmony  with  the  very  heart  of  things.     If,  on  the 


Chap.  II.]  COD  IN  HUMANITY.  55 

other  hand,  you  stifle  or  defy  the  appeal,  and  cling  to  the  ease 
of  your  low  level,  you  are  torn  with  keen  misery,  while  the 
angel   and   the    fiend    are    contending    for    you,    and    then 
sickened  with  self-contempt,  when  the  strife  is  over,  and  you 
have  sent  the  sacred  messenger  back  to  heaven.     The  divine 
importunity  will   not  return,  or,  at  least,  can   never   speak 
again   in    that  warning  voice,   without  reproach  which   you 
could  scarce  refuse  to  hear  ;  and,  in  its  absence  your  shame 
and  compunction  v.'ill  tire  themselves  out :  the  organs  of  3'our 
moral  life,  impaired  by  the  shock,  protect  themselves  from 
future  pain  by  becoming  benumbed,  and  refusing  to  give  such 
delicate  response  again ;  and,  while  your  cheerfulness  comes 
back  at  one  entrance,  your  nobler  hope  goes  out  at  the  other. 
With    disuse    and    rejection,  the  higher  springs  retire    and 
vanish   out   of  sight,   not   only  abandonmg   us  to  our  poor 
performance,  but  lowering  the  range  of  our  very  inohlems,  and 
leaving  us  with  a  sinking  standard  for  our  thought  as  well  as 
an  enfeebled  vigour  in  our  will.     While  your  face  is  turned 
upwards,  and,  on  the  angel-ladder,  you  are  climbing  nearer 
heaven,  there  are,  even  at  midnight,  lights  on  the  steps  above 
to  show  the  way ;  but  once  look  downwards,  and  mingle  with 
the  descending  troop,  and  one  by  one  the  lights  go  out  aloft, 
and  there  is  darkness  overhead  ;  and,  by  mere  invitation  of  rela- 
tive brightness,  you  reverse  the  direction  of  your  eye,  and  your 
foot  is  drawn  to  the  step  below.     A  moving  nature,   with  its 
attractions  set  upon   an  ascending  scale,    must    either  rise 
or  sink  :  nor,  in  such  a  constitution  of  things,  is  there  any 
fact  more  natural  and  more  awful  than  the  "  blindness  in 
part "  which  is  incurred  by  all  unfaithfulness  :  so  that  as  our 
actual  becomes  meaner,  our  possibility  itself  contracts ;  and 
our  debt  of  responsibility  is  ever  growing,  not  only  by  the  sin 
which  we  consciously  commit,  but  by  the  lost  sanctities  which 
we   have   driven  into  the  wastes    of    the    unconscious    and 
invisible. 

On  the  whole,  then,  the  moral  phenomena  of  life,  including 
those  which  are  thought  least  reconcilable  with  an  intuitive 
discernment  of  ethical  differences,  receive  from  it  a  fair 
interpretation.  Its  objective  meaning,  the  religious  signifi- 
cance 01  its  felt  authority,  must  still  be  reserved  for  separate 


56  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

treatment.     Meanwhile,  I  take  leave  of  the  present  part  of 
my  subject  with   one   comment  more  :    that  each  spring  of 
action  should  bring  with  it,  on  its  first  encounter  with  anotlier 
in  our  mind,  a  report,  there  and  then,  of  its  relative  authority, 
is  suitable,  nay,  indispensable,  to  our  position  as  responsible 
beings.     Unless  and  until  I  know  the  right,  you  cannot  call 
me   to  account  for  the  wrong.     If  I   am   to   pilot   my  ship 
through  waters  I  have  never  traversed,  you  must  spread  the 
chart  before  me,  and  forewarn  me   of  the   shallows  and  the 
reefs.     It  will  not  do  to  let  me  learn  my  lesson  from  experi- 
ence, and  fling  me  upon  observation  of  the  stars,  and  sound- 
ings of  the  ship,  beneath,  perhaps,  the  blackened  heavens, 
and   on   the  wildest  sea  :    unless  you  would  have  me  ship- 
wrecked into  skill,  I  must  be  taught  the  coast,  and  have  my 
insight,  ere  I  step  on  board.     The  foresight  of  prudence  may 
wait  for  experience,  and  gather  its  breadth  and  refinement  by 
degrees ;  for,  during  the  process,  we  can  but  smart  for  our 
blunders,  and  are  involved  in  no  sin  ;  and  often  enough  we 
learn  best  when  we  are  pupils  of  our  own   mistakes.     But, 
while  intelligence  comes  out  at  the  end  of  action,  moral  dis- 
cernment must  be  ready  at  its  beginning,  and  be  beforehand 
with  the  earliest  problem  that  can  arise ;  nor  can  it  be  that 
the  wisdom  needed  for  the  first  occasions  of  ethical  experience 
is  itself  left  to  be  the  product  of  experience.     On  a  journey  so 
momentous,  which  can  never  be  retraced,  and  on  which  the 
soul  has  its  one  chance  of  ascending  to  the  high  fountains  of 
humanity  and  surmounting  the  Alpine  glories  of  the  world, 
it  were  a  poor  consolation  for  missing  the  passes,  and  being 
lost  amid  the  swamps,  that,  at  the  end  of  her  wanderings, 
she  had  learnt  the  way.     No  :  skill  and  prudence  are  found  ,- 
but  conscience  is  given.      And,  accordingly,  it  is  (within  its 
range)   the  clearest  and  the  tenderest  in  the  dawn    of  life, 
while,  as   yet,   the   haze  of    unfaithfulness  is  thin,  and  no 
gathering   clouds   of  guilt   taint  and  intercept  the  purity  of 
its  light.     And  it  is  a  sad  substitute  when,  in  later  years,  the 
native   insight   is   replaced  by  the    sharp  foresight,  and  we 
compute,  with  wisdom,  the  way  which  we  should  take  in  love. 
Are  we  never  to  blend  the  fresh  heart  of  childhood  and  the 
large  mind  of  age,  and  so  recover  the  lost  harmonies  of  life  ? 


Chap.  II.]  GOD  IN  HUMANITY.  57 

If  a  true  account  has  been  given  of  the  fundamental  facts 
of  our  moral  psychology,  they  cannot  be  left  standing  as  inde- 
pendent and  perfect  in  themselves.  They  do  not  fulfil  the 
conditions  of  a  self-sufficing  system,  but,  like  a  truncated 
geometrical  solid,  compel  us  to  look  for  a  completion  beyond 
their  own  boundary, — to  ask,  what  would  their  form  be  if  their 
idea  were  visibly  carried  out,  and  to  what  constitution  of  the 
world  they  are  intrinsically  fitted.  Hitherto  we  have  examined 
them  simply  or  chiefly  as  parts  of  our  inner  experience.  But 
one  element  is  comprised  in  them  which  seems  to  be  more 
than  a  mere  feeling  in  ourselves,  and  to  constitute  a  link 
attaching  us  to  a  scheme  of  things  beyond  :  I  mean  the 
authority  belonging  to  every  better  impulse  of  our  nature  as 
against  the  worse.  For,  wherever  authority  is  exercised  or 
felt,  a  relation  subsists  which  it  takes  two  members  to  consti- 
tute. Submission  demanded  from  one  implies  rule  imposed 
by  another  :  parent  and  child,  master  and  servant,  teacher 
and  taught,  lawgiver  and  subject,  exemplify  the  pairs  formed 
under  such  relation,  in  which  a  higher  directs  a  lower,  and  a 
lower  looks  up  to  a  higher.  Now,  we  have  seen  that  the 
moral  structure  of  the  human  mind  carries  in  it,  as  its  deepest 
essence,  the  consciousness  of  a  binding  authority,  claiming 
our  preference  for  the  better  incentive  over  the  worse.  It  is 
based,  therefore,  on  just  such  a  dual  relation,  and  compels  us 
to  ask,  Wliere  are  the  two  required  terms?  One  oi  them,  it 
is  plain,  is  our  own  7vill,  on  which  the  demand  for  right  choice 
is  made,  and  which,  conscious  of  the  appeal,  is  ennobled  by 
yielding  to  it,  or  degraded  by  defying  it ;  and  which,  in  pro- 
portion to  its  fidelity,  is  admitted  to  a  more  elevated  discipline. 
But  where  is  tlie  other,  which  prefers  the  demand,  and  admin- 
isters the  discipline  ?  How  are  we  to  find  and  name  this 
power,  felt  within,  invisible  without,  which  plays  the  part  of  a 
superior,  and,  in  speaking  to  our  will  as  bound  to  serve, 
wins  assent  from  our  heart  of  hearts?  To  this  question, 
"SVliat  ?.s  the  ultimate  authority  which  commands  us  ?  there 
are  several  possible  answers.  These  we  may  pass  under  a 
brief  review. 

1.  This  authority  is  often  resolved  hito  the  persuasive  power 
of  superior  pleasure,  or  exemption  from  pain.     No  one  incen- 


58  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

tive,  it  is  said,  can  claim  any  advantage  over  another,  except 
on  the  score  of  happier  effects.  "  Nature,"  says  Bentham, 
"  has  placed  mankind  under  the  governance  of  two  sovereign 
masters,  'pain  ajid.j)leasure.  It  is  for  them  alone  to  point  out 
what  we  ought  to  do,  as  well  as  to  determine  what  we  shall 
do.  On  the  one  hand  the  standard  of  right  and  wrong,  on 
the  other  the  chain  of  causes  and  effects,  are  fastened  to  their 
throne."*  "  There  is  in  reality,"  says  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  "  nothing 
desired  except  happiness.  Whatever  is  desired  otherwise  than 
as  a  means  to  some  end  beyond  itself,  and  ultimately  to 
happiness,  is  desired  as  itself  a  part  of  happiness,  and  is  not 
desired  for  itself  until  it  has  become  so.  Those  who  desire 
virtue  for  its  own  sake,  desire  it  either  because  the  conscious- 
ness of  it  is  a  pleasure,  or  because  the  consciousness  of  being 
without  it  is  a  pam,  or  for  both  reasons  united  ;  as  in  truth 
the  pleasure  and  pain  seldom  exist  separately,  but  almost 
always  together,  the  same  person  feeling  pleasure  in  the  degree 
of  virtue  attained,  and  pain  in  not  having  attained  more." 
"  Happiness  is  the  sole  end  of  human  action,  and  the  promo- 
tion of  it  the  test  by  which  to  judge  of  all  human  conduct." t 
The  ethical  adequacy  of  this  doctrine  will  be  considered  here- 
after. Psychologically,  it  seems  to  me  incorrect  in  assuming 
that  we  never  act  but  for  pleasure  as  an  end ;  for  this  descrip- 
tion misses  the  whole  of  the  instinctive  life,  during  which  we 
are  propelled  by  blind  impulse,  and  have  to  choose  between 
our  incentives,  without  as  yet  knowing  what  they  will  do  to 
us.  Pleasure  is,  in  fact,  the  fruit,  and  not  the  germ,  of  the 
several  types  of  natural  activity  :  it  is  simply  the  satisfaction 
of  reaching  their  various  ends,  and,  but  for  their  existence 
first,  could  never  itself  arise  afterwards.  No  one,  for  instance, 
exercises  resentment  because  he  enjoys  the  pain  of  others : 
he  enjoys  that  pain  only  because  he  is  resentful.  And,  if  you 
pity  suffering,  it  is  not  in  order  to  win  the  pleasures  of  relief : 
to  your  compassion  you  are  indebted  for  its  bringing  .a  plea- 
sure to  you  at  all. 

"  It  is  by  no  means  true,"  says  Aristotle,  "  that  the  virtues 

*  Bentham's  Introduction  to  the  Principles   of    Morals  and  Legislation, 
chap.  i.  §  i.  p.  1. 
t  Utilitarianism,  chap.  iv.  pp.  56,  57. 


Chap.  1 1.  J  GOD   IN  HUMANITY.  59 

have  universally  any  other  pleasure  in  their  action  than  tliat 
which  is  incident  to  the  attainment  of  their  proper  ends."* 
If  your  nature  is  the  seat  of  twenty  primitive  affections,  each 
in  love  with  its  own  distinct  object,  there  is  not  one  of  them 
which  will  not  be  happy  in  its  success  :  but  shall  we  say,  on 
that  account,  that  they  are  not  twenty,  but  only  one  ?  and 
that  happiness  is  your  only  aim,  and  absolute  ruler  ?  You 
will  justly  protest  that  it  is  not  the  happiness  that  supplies 
the  aim,  but  the  aim  that  supplies  the  happiness.  When 
some  propension  in  us,  and  some  external  thing  which  suits 
it,  find  each  other  out,  a  satisfaction  arises.  But  this  plea- 
sure which  results  from  the  completed  relation,  and  is  pre- 
viously undiscovered,  cannot  be  the  source  of  the  initial 
activity.  To  call  it  so  is  to  make  condition  and  consequent 
change  places. 

As  we  emerge,  however,  fi'om  the  conflicts  of  impulse,  and 
having  learned  their  lesson,  begin  to  look  forward  and  com- 
pute our  way,  a  balance  of  pleasure,  or  of  exemption  from  pain, 
certainly  becomes  a  just  object  of  preference,  and  often  decides 
our  course.     But,  where  it  does  so,  it  produces  simply  an  act 
of  prudence,  such  as  might  appear  in  a  merely  rational  world 
able  to  economize  its  resources  wisely,  without  any  sense  of 
moral  distinctions  at  all.     This  is  the  impassable  limit,  beyond 
which  the  motive  said  to  be  omnipotent  can  never  be  carried ; 
and  unless  all  human  excellence  is  resolved  into  prudence, 
worldly  or  othcr-icorldly,  unless  character  is  really  without  any 
higher  region  where  self-regards  can  breathe  no  more,  the 
sceptre  of  pleasure  meets  here  the  frontier  of  its  sway,  and 
carries  no  prerogative  into  the  proper  territory  of  duiy.     In 
order  to  explam  away  the  felt  authority  of  right,  it  has  always 
been  found  necessary  practically  to  abolish  the  distinction  be- 
tween prudential  and  moral  action  ;    leaving  them  no  other 
difference  than  that  of  the  narrower  and  nearer,  from  the 
more  comprehensive  and  far-sighted,  economy  of  happiness. 
Both   Bentham   and   Paley  identify    "authority"  with    the 
power  oifear.     "SYith  the  former  it  is  the  fear  of  other  men : 
with  the  latter  it  is  the /car  of  hell.     And,   apart  from  these, 
there  is,  we  are  assured,  no  awful  gromid  of  choice  between 

*  Eth.  Nicom.  III.  ix.  5. 


6o  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

the  possibilities  before  us.  When  you  want  to  thrust  your 
likings  upon  me,  says  Bentham,  and  to  tyrannize  over  me 
with  your  tastes  and  fancies,  you  dress  them  up  as  a  moral 
faculty,  which  advances  upon  me  with  a  grand  air,  and  pre- 
tends to  have  rights  over  me  too  royal  for  your  private  impu- 
dence to  assume ;  and,  if  I  am  as  impressible  by  hobgoblins 
as  the  majority  of  men,  your  device  may  easily  secure  my 
obedience.*  Were  this  account  correct,  and  were  the  procla- 
mation of  right  no  more  than  an  arrogant  "  ipse-dixitism,"  it 
is  conceivable  that  I  might  manage  to  browbeat  another  man, 
and  frighten  him  into  submission  to  my  sentiment.  But  how 
could  I  do  so  to  vujself?  How  could  I  make  one  desire 
threaten  another  with  the  police  ?  for  the  police  being  also 
my  own,  and  overhearing  the  whole  game,  will  be  apt  to  wink 
at  both  parties  to  the  sham,  and  "  make  things  pleasant "  all 
round.  At  all  events,  it  is  obvious,  that,  if  this  history  were 
true,  the  personal  sentiments  of  conscience  would  be  an 
ulterior  superstition,  by  which,  having  imposed  on  others, 
we  at  last  imposed  upon  ourselves  :  they  would  be  an  illusion 
of  the  second  degree,  impossible  till  the  first  had  an  integral 
and  definite  existence.  Yet  we  have  seen  that  the  inverse 
order  is  a  fundamental  fact  in  our  moral  nature,  and  that  self- 
judgment  is  the  prior  condition  of  all  judgment  of  others.  To 
this  prior  stage  Bentham's  analysis  is  ludicrously  inappli- 
cable. 

Nor  is  Paley's  account,  though  in  the  spirit  of  a  sermon 
rather  than  a  satire,  one  whit  more  satisfactory.  It  is  given 
in  answer  to  a  different  question :  not,  "  Why  should  I  care 
for  your  moral  sense?"  but,  "Why  should  I  care  for  my 
on-n  ?  " — "  Only,"  he  replies,  "  because  heaven  and  hell  lie 
behind  it."  Take  away  the  assurance  of  reward  and  punish- 
ment hereafter,  and  with  these  sanctions  its  authority 
vanishes :  I  may  do  as  I  like,  and  put  up  with  the  sentimental 
discomfort  of  my  own  remorse,  f  A  more  thorough-going 
misinterpretation  of  the  elements  of  "  authority  "  it  is  im- 
possible to  imagine, — dispensing  with  its  essence,  and  insist- 

*  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  ii.  §  14,  note, 
t  Moral  and  Politi.cal   Philosophy ;    chapter    on    the    Moral    Sense,  last 
paragraphs. 


Chap.  II.]  GOD  IN  HUMANITY.  6l 

ing  on  its  appendages.     Are  we,  then,  to  sa}',  that  if  there 
were  no  pains  of  hell,  and  joys  of  heaven,  there  would  be  no 
duty  binding  upon  men  ?  and  that,  while  the   call  and  the 
compunctions  of  conscience  remain,  duty  can  cease  to  be  ? 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  external  sufferings,  wherever  placed 
in  time,  which  it  rests  with  us,  in  simple  prudence  or  im- 
prudence, to  meet  or  to  decline ;  and  it  is  the  internal  appeal  for 
preference,  and  remorse  for  rejection,  which  it  may  be  in  our 
power,  but  is  never  in  our  right,  to  tamper  with  by  likings  of 
our  own.     Whatever  impressiveness  there  is  in  the  prospective 
retribution  belongs  to  it,  not  as  a  sentient  expectation,  but  as 
a  moral  award.     Strip  it  of  its  ethical  significance,  and  reduce 
it  to  a  naked  affection  of  the  sensitive  nature  ;  turn  it  from 
an   emblem   of  justice   to   an   arbitrary-,    though   calculable, 
physical  experience, — and  all   its   solemnity   is   gone :   if   it 
commands  our  will,  it  is  of  power,  and  not  of  right ;  and  if 
its  strength  is  tested  side  by  side  with  any  deep  conviction  of 
right,  its  emptiness  of  all  authority  will   instantly   appear. 
Bring  Paley  face  to  face  with  a  congregation  of  the  Cornish 
miners  of  his  time  to  try  his  ultimate  appeal ;  let  him  urge, 
with  his  tersest  good  sense,  his  plea  of  long-visioned  prudence, 
"You  had  better  take  care,  or  you  will  go  to  hell;  "  and,  if 
this  were  his  last  word   (and  he  confesses  that  he  has  "  no 
more  to  say"),  is  there  a  passion  which  his  message  would 
quell,  or  a  heart  which  it  would  subdue  ?     Or  would  the  list- 
less hearers  stroll  into  tomorrow,  unaltered  from  to-day  ?  But 
let  a  Wesley  stand  up  before  them,  and  press  home  upon  them 
the  "conviction  of  sin,"  dwelling  not  so  much  on  the  future 
anguish  as  on  the  present  ruin  of  the  soul,  interpreting  the 
secret  shame  and  self-contempt  of  its  daily  recklessness,  re- 
calling its  memory  of  better  life,  appealing  to  its  inward  long- 
ing for  higher  things,  and  ineffaceable  kindred  with  a  holy 
God,  and  we  know  by  experience  into  what  deeps  such  a  \H)ice 
may  penetrate  ;  how  it  reaches  the  dryest  fountain  of  tears ; 
how  it  casts  the  strong  man  to  the  ground  ;  how  it  bends  the 
stiff  neck  of  pride,  and  makes  the  frozen  heart  flow  down  ; 
how  it  may  shake  and  convulse  the  habits  of  a  life,  and, 
driving  their  evil   spirit  out,  bring  them  to  a  composed  and 
wakeful  order  under  the  heavenly  eye. 


62  A  UTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

No  such  conquests  are  possible  to  the  mere  estimate  of 
happiness, — to  any  prudence,  temporal  or  eternal.  Having 
no  executive  but  the  police  of  self-interest,  it  cannot  pass  into 
a  province  where  interest  has  to  be  summoned,  not  to  parley, 
but  to  surrender  without  terms.  It  may  induce,  but  cannot 
command  :  it  is  invested  with  no  authority ;  it  is  the  source 
of  no  obligation.  It  may  warn  us  against  a  blunder  :  it  can- 
not awe  us  out  of  any  sin.  It  has  no  voices  to  tell  its  bidding 
that  can  speak  to  us  from  above :  they  come  to  us  on  our  own 
level,  and  bargain  with  us  in  our  own  coin.  They  cannot, 
therefore,  lift  us  out  of  our  own  disposal  to  serve  a  higher 
law ;  for,  say  what  you  will,  we  shall  never  cease  to  feel,  that, 
with  our  own  pleasures  and  pains,  if  these  be  your  ultimate 
resource,  we  may  do  as  we  like,  and  you  can  establish  no  right 
in  them  against  us  ;  and  shall  still  applaud  the  noble  incon- 
sistency of  our  great  utilitarian  in  declaring  that  "  to  hell  he 
will  go,"  rather  than  pay  a  lying  worship  to  a  tyrant  God.* 
If  he  is  right,  as  assuredly  he  is,  then  there  is  a  claim  upon 
us  in  veracity,  an  appeal  to  us  in  righteousness,  which  no 
extremity  of  consequences  can  cancel,  but  which  will  stand 
fast  in  the  face  of  an  infinitude  of  agony  taken  in  place  of  a 
forfeited  infinitude  of  joy.  In  the  presence  of  that  solemn 
claim  vv^e  lose  our  personal  rights,  and  have  no  liberty  to  twist 
the  lips  to  falsehood,  and  bend  the  Imee  in  hypocrisy :  the 
remorse  for  such  baseness  is  more  than  suffering,  and  has  in  it 
that  which  we  are  not  free  to  incur.  Though  you  show  us  the 
happy  slopes  of  paradise  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other  take 

*  Mill's  Examination  of  Hamilton,  ch.  vii.  pp.  102-3. 

"  If,  instead  of  the  '  glad  tidings  '  that  there  exists  a  Being  in  whom  all 
the  excellences  which  the  highest  human  mind  can  conceive  exist  in  a  degree 
inconceivable  to  us,  I  am  informed  that  the  world  is  ruled  by  a  Being  whose 
attributes  are  infinite,  but  what  they  are  we  cannot  learn,  nor  what  are  the 
principles  of  his  government,  except  that '  the  highest  human  morality  which 
we  are  ca]3able  of  conceiving '  does  not  sanction  them, — convince  me  of  it, 
and  I  will  bear  my  fate  as  I  may.  But  when  I  am  told  that  I  must  believe 
this,  and  at  the  same  time  call  this  Being  by  the  names  which  express  and 
af&rm  the  highest  hnman  morality,  I  say  in  plain  terms  that  I  will  not. 
Whatever  power  such  a  Being  may  have  over  me,  there  is  one  thing  which 
he  shall  not  do, — he  shall  not  comj^el  me  to  worship  him.  I  will  call  no 
Being  good  who  is  not  what  I  mean  when  I  apply  that  epithet  to  my  fellow- 
creatures  ;  and,  if  such  a  Being  can  sentence  me  to  hell  for  not  so  calling 
him,  to  hell  I  will  go." 


Chap,  r I.]  GOD  IN  HUMANITY.      W.  63 

US  through  boundless  torture-halls,  the  walls  hung  round  with 
excruciatmg  instruments,  and  the  pavement  thronged  with 
fiends,  none  can  challenge  our  title  to  defy  the  difference,  and 
take  the  lot  of  proffered  miser3\  It  is  not,  then,  in  this 
sentient  element  that  we  meet  with  the  authority  beyond  us. 

2.  Can  we  find  it,  then,  by  dividing  our  own  nature  mto  two, 
and  saying  that  there  is  a  certain  better  x>art  of  self  which  has 
right  of  command  over  the  rest  ?  In  one  sense,  such  a  state- 
ment is  no  doubt  true.  It  is  within  the  arena  of  our  conscious 
mind  that  both  sides  of  the  moral  fact — the  announcement  of 
the  claim  upon  us,  and  the  acceptance  of  the  claim  by  us — 
present  themselves  :  both  are  known  to  us  by  our  own  feeling, 
and  form  part  of  our  own  inner  history.  But,  though  the 
authority  of  the  higher  incentive  is  sdf-knoicn,  it  cannot  be 
self-created  ;  for,  while  it  is  in  me,  it  is  above  me.  Its  tones 
thrill  through  my  chamber  where  I  sit  alone  :  but  it  was  not 
my  voice  that  uttered  them  :  the}'  came  to  me,  but  not  from 
me.  They  find  me  out  in  my  sin  when  I  would  fain  be  let 
alone  ;  they  reproach  me  till  I  go  out  to  hide  my  tears,  though 
I  do  not  want  to  leave  the  mirth  and  song  ;  they  make  a 
coward  of  me,  and  shake  me  in  my  shoes,  though  I  am  for 
setting  my  face  as  flint,  and  hardening  my  joints  as  iron.  I 
resist  the  claims  of  the  right ;  I  wrestle  with  them  ;  I  am 
beaten  by  them :  or,  I  surrender  to  them ;  I  follow  them ;  I 
triumph  with  them :  and  how,  then,  can  you  say  that  they 
are  but  the  shadow  of  myself  ?  The  authority  which  I  set  up  I 
am  able  also  to  take  down  ;  yet,  do  what  I  may,  I  cannot  dis- 
charge my  compunctions,  and  shut  the  door  on  them  as  on 
troublesome  creditors  who  have  nothing  to  show  against  me, 
and  depend  upon  my  will  for  any  claim  they  have.  No  act  of 
repeal  on  my  part  avails  to  release  me  from  the  obligations 
which  turn  up  within  my  consciousness ;  nor,  by  any  edict  of 
clemency  to  my  own  moral  bankruptcy,  can  I  say  to  myself, 
"  I  forgive  thee  all  that  debt."  Xay,  the  very  effort  at 
oblivion  only  darkens  the  shade  of  guilt ;  and  he  who  stifles 
/]is  self-upbraidings,  and  drowns  his  remorse,  and  tries  to 
treat  his  transgressions  as  all  his  own  affair,  smks  doubly 
deep  in  immediate  offence,  and  prepares  the  seed-plot  for 
every   future   sin.     Besides,    if  there   is   to   be   partition    of 


64  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  1. 

the  human  self  between  the  functions  of  command  and  of 
obedience,  what  will  our  analysis  give  us  for  subject,  and 
what  for  Lord  ?  The  former  we  Imow ;  but  where  is  the 
latter?  It  is  ice  ourselves,  our  will,  our  j^^rsojiality ,  the  ivlwle 
of  our  voluntary  nature,  that  must  be  owned  as  under  higher 
orders  ;  that  is,  precisely  our  supreme  characteristics, — those 
which  distinguish  us  from  mere  creatures,  and  set  us  "  a  little 
lower  than  the  angels."  And,  if  these  constitute  the  suhject- 
term  within  us,  nothing  is  left  for  the  seat  of  lordship — if  it 
is,  indeed,  but  an  element  of  ourselves — except  the  impersonal, 
the  involuntary,  the  unreasoning  affections  which  surround  the 
will,  and  beset  it  with  importunities  they  neither  hear  nor 
overhear.  To  a  responsible  will,  nothing  that  is  less  than  will 
can  issue  orders,  and  commit  a  trust ;  and,  if  we  are  really 
taught  the  lessons  of  conscience,  assuredly  we  are  not  self- 
taught. 

Moreover,  if  the  authority  which  claims  us  were  of  this 
merely  subjective  nature,  if  it  were  the  aspect  which  one  part 
of  self  bore  towards  another,  it  would  lie  within  the  interior 
relations  of  the  individual :  and  so  it  would  belong  to  him, 
though  he  were  in  solitude  ;  and,  though  he  were  in  society,  it 
would  be  valid  for  him  alone.  But  neither  of  these  things  is 
true.  Though  the  essence  of  our  nature,  as  responsible  and 
religious  beings,  is  in  the  shrine  of  its  self-conscious  and 
reflective  powers,  it  does  not  wake  uj)  there  spontaneously  to 
pay  its  secret  worship  ;  but,  if  left  alone  in  silence,  will  fall 
back  into  the  sleep  of  animal  existence.  It  needs  the  school 
of  sympathy  and  society,  the  appeal  of  objective  character, 
the  play  of  the  like  and  the  different,  to  fling  into  the  soul 
the  sweeping  winds  at  which  its  chords  speak  out.  We  learn 
ourselves  and  others  together ;  it  is  the  recij^rocities  of  life 
that  deepen  and  enrich  its  solitudes ;  and  in  every  age  the 
ferment  of  the  city  has  rolled  around  the  closet  of  sublimest 
prayer.  The  acted  drama  of  life,  unless  witnessed  with  mere 
callous  criticism,  reaches  the  springs  of  secret  j^oetry  in  the 
heart,  and  the  real  startles  the  ideal  from  its  repose.  The 
moment  we  see  a  nobleness  which  is  above  us,  we  recognize  it 
and  own  its  claim,  and  are  fired  -with  possibilities  we  never 
guessed   before.     What  does  this  bespeak, — this  flashing  of 


Chap.  II.]  GOD   IN  HUMANITY.  65 

conscience  from  mind  to  mind,   this  consent  of  each   to  the 
moral  life  of  all,  this  answering  look  of  the  outward  and  the 
inward, — but  that  the  authority  which  claims  us,  whatever  it 
be,  is  something  far  beyond  the  personal  nature,  wide  as  the 
compass  of  humanity,  embracing  us  all  in  one  moral  organism, 
— a  universal  righteousness  which  reaches  through  time,  and 
suffers  no   individual   to   escape?     Surely   it   is   a   fantastic 
scepticism  or  a  superfluous  modesty  which  would  treat  all 
moral  authority  as  a  personal  idiosyncrasy,  and  decline  to 
apply  it  to  others  :  saying,  for  instance,  "  It  may  be  better  for 
you  to  die  for  your  country  than  to  betray  it  and  escape ;   but 
how  can  you  tell  that  it  is  so  for  your  comrades  ?  it  may  be  a 
peculiarity   of    your   mental    constitution  not    extending    to 
theirs."     If  such  a  limitation  is  good  in  morals,  it  is  equally 
justified  in  regard  to  intellectual  truth  which  my  nature  con- 
strains me  to  accept ;  and  it  Avould  be  only  a  proper  self- 
restraint  to  say,  "  For  my  part,  I  think  of  space  as  having 
three  dimensions  ;  and  I  cannot  think  of  two  times  as  being 
togetlier :  but  I  speak  only  for  myself,  and  have  no  right  to 
expect   assent    from    any   one   else."     A   late   distinguished 
mathematician    and    logician    (Prof.    De   Morgan)    actually 
carried  his  intellectual  modesty  to  this  extreme  ;    asserting 
that,  of  the  infinite  extension  between  the  directions  of  two 
divergent  straight  lines,  he  certainly  had  a  positive  idea  :  but 
that  other  people  might  very  possibly  be  without  it ;  for  that 
there  was  no  telling  whether  all  minds  were  made  alike.     But, 
of  the  two,  which  is  the  more  legitimate  postulate, — to  assume 
a  universal  diversity  of  reason  in  difierent  persons  until  con- 
currence is  proved,  and  so  far  forth  as  it  remains  unproved  ? 
or  to  assume  a  universal  sameness  of  mental  constitution  hi 
mankind  until  we  are  obliged  to  allow  for  a  certain  range  of 
difference?     On  the  latter,  it  cannot  be  denied,   all  language 
is  founded,  all  interchange  of  thought  and  feeling,  all  perma- 
nent literature,  all  progressive  science ;  and  were  each  mind 
that  appeared  upon  the  scene  treated  as  a  nature  new  and 
strange  till  it  had  made  good  its  similarities,  one  by  one,  there 
could  be  no  social  organism,  no  spiritual  culture,  no  historical 
life. 

Moreover,  the  differential  authority  of  one  inward  spring  of 

F 


66  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

action  as  against  another  we  cannot  believe  at  all,  without 
believing  it  to  attach  to  these  principles  themselves  in  their 
mutual  relation,  and  to  cling  to  them,  wherever  and  whatever 
the  mind  be  in  which  they  appear.  It  is  owned  as  a  function 
inherent  in  them  on  every  field  which  gives  them  scope  to 
act,  and  not  appended  to  them  by  the  variable  peculiarities  of 
the  individual  agent.  Accordingly,  we  make  it  the  foundation 
of  an  undoubting  claim  upon  others  :  nor,  on  behalf  of  any 
sane  wrong-doer,  should  we  for  a  moment  listen  to  the  plea 
that  he  has  a  moral  constitution  special  to  himself,  for  which 
ours  is  no  rule ;  though  we  are  quite  familiar  with  just  such 
exceptional  conditions  in  the  case  of  colour-blindness  and 
similar  infirmities  of  perception.  Far  from  being  valid  for 
you,  and  not  for  me,  this  moral  authority  invariably  gives  the 
ideas  of  duty  and  of  rights  together  ;  duties  for  me  which  are 
rights  to  you,  duties  for  you  which  are  rights  to  me.  And  the 
reciprocal  claim  is  readily  responded  to  :  it  takes  no  man  by 
surprise :  each  one  owns  the  title  of  our  expectations  from, 
him,  and,  under  the  name  of  Justice,  falls  under  the  obliga- 
tions we  impose  upon  him.  Unsupported  by  this  inward 
acknowledgment  ever  ready  m  the  mind,  we  should  be  unable, 
by  the  mere  grinding  of  coercion,  to  command  the  sacrifices 
and  abstinences  which  are  now  spontaneously  submitted  to. 

The  common  sentiment  of  conscience  is  the  very  ground  of 
public  law,  the  assumption  of  private  honour  ;  and  weaves  us 
all  into  one  texture  of  moral  relations,  which  has  neither 
continuous  strength,  nor  pattern  of  beauty,  till  the  single 
threads  disappear  in  the  whole,  and  take  the  order  of  the 
disposing  will. 

3.  Though,  however,  authority  cannot  be  administered  by 
one  part  of  self  over  the  rest,  though  it  must  be  acknowledged 
as  a  relation  of  person  to  person  complete,  still,  since  we  are 
so  dependent  for  our  consciousness  of  it  upon  society,  is  it, 
perhaps,  a  thing  imposed  upon  us  by  our  fellow-men  ?  May 
it  not  be  the  dominating  influence  of  the  whole  over  the  part, 
like  the  discipline  of  the  camp  over  the  conduct  of  the  private 
soldier  ?  It  is  difficult  to  free  these  questions  from  ambiguity : 
but  in  no  sense  do  they  seem  to  me  to  suggest  more  than  very 
partial   truth ;  and,   in   any   sense  which  substitutes   social 


Chap.  II.]  GOD  IN  HUMANITY.  67 

power  for  the  personal  consciousness  of  moral  differences, 
they  suggest  nothing  that  is  true  at  all.  "What  do  you  mean 
by  the  "  whole  "  which  environs  the  individual  ?  How  do 
you  think  of  the  throng  of  his  "  fellow-men,"  of  the  "  society  " 
around  him  ?  With  what  sort  of  nature  do  you  charge  it  ? 
with  what  faculties  and  affections  endow  it  ?  Is  it  conceived 
of  by  you  as  an  aggregate  of  separate  persons,  taken  one  by 
one,  without  any  consciousness  of  moral  distinctions,  and 
combined  simply  for  the  greater  strength  of  associated  will, 
and  intent  only  on  voting  into  existence  convenient  rules 
which  the  reluctant  shall  be  constrained  to  obey  ?  If  so, 
then,  in  your  dominance  of  the  "  whole  over  the  part,"  you 
give  me  only  the  relation  of  force  to  weakness,  which  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  relation  of  right  to  wrong. 
Mere  magnitude  of  scale  carries  no  moral  quality ;  nor  could 
a  whole  population  of  devils,  by  unanimous  ballot,  confer 
righteousness  upon  their  will,  and  make  it  binding  on  a  single 
Abdiel.  Such  as  the  natures  are,  separately  taken,  such  will 
be  the  collective  sum  :  no  crowd  of  pigmies  can  add  them- 
selves up  into  a  God ;  and  self-love  multiplied  by  self-love 
will  only  become  self-love  of  higher  power.  Nor  will  accumu- 
lation in  time  serve  you  any  better  than  aggregation  in  mass. 
The  highest  capital  of  human  wishes,  paid  up  through  all  the 
ages,  although  it  may  ruin  the  small  dealer  in  such  wares, 
and  drive  his  venture  from  the  field,  can  make  nothing  just  that 
was  not  just  before.  At  best,  it  can  only  enforce  obligations 
already  there, — obligations  which  it  cannot  cancel,  and  did 
not  create.  If,  however,  you  will  take  "  society  "  to  mean  the 
affiliated  multitude  of  consciences,  the  common  council  of 
responsible  men,  then  it  is  most  true  that  the  moral  authority 
which  we  acknowledge  is  brought  to  an  intense  focus  in  our 
minds  by  the  reflected  lights  of  theirs ;  and  we  should  but 
dimly  own  it,  did  they  not  own  it  too.  But  how  is  it  that 
they  thus  work  upon  us,  and  mould  us  to  a  new  docility  ? 
Is  it  that  they  are  principals  in  command,  and  we  subordinates 
in  service,  that,  accepting  their  will  as  sovereign,  we  are 
content  to  do  their  bidding '?  No  :  their  function  in  this 
matter  is,  not  to  till  the  post  of  authority,  but  to  join  us  on  the 
steps  of  submission  below  it ;  to  confess  their  fellow-feeling  with 

F  2 


68  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  1. 

US,  and  accept  their  partnership  under  the  same  law.  Instead 
of  being  our  masters,  they  are  but  bondsmen,  with  us,  of  a 
higher  righteousness,  which  opens  its  oracles  and  seeks  its 
organs  in  us  all.  And  so,  following  out  the  moral  authority 
from  my  solitary  nature  to  human-kind,  I  only  widen,  and  do 
not  elevate,  my  position ;  I  gain  a  larger  view  of  its  range, 
but  no  higher  insight  into  its  source  :  I  still  am  at  the  lower 
term  of  this  mysterious  relation  ;  and  must  yet  look  up,  if 
perchance  from  the  form  of  the  other  the  cloud  may  pass 
away. 

4.  And  may  we  not  say  that  the  cloud  already  grows  trans- 
parent, and  gives  promise  of  clearing  away  '?  The  authority 
to  which  conscience  introduces  me  has  its  station,  we  have 
seen,  beyond  the  limits  of  my  own  personality  ;  with  equal 
certainty,  beyond  that  of  my  neighbour,  in  whom  my  experi- 
ence is  simply  repeated ;  and,  similarly,  beyond  that  of  any 
and  every  man.  Though  emerging  in  consciousness,  often 
with  the  sharpest  surprise  of  feeling,  it  is  objective  to  us  all ; 
and  is  necessarily  referred  by  us  to  the  nature  of  things,, 
irrespective  of  the  accidents  of  our  mental  constitution.  It 
is  with  us  as  a  holy  presence,  and  guaranteed  to  us  by  all  the 
marks  which  distinguish  existence  from  illusion.  It  is  not 
dependent  on  us,  as  an  invention  or  dream,  but  independent, 
as  a  thing  given  us  to  apprehend.  Like  any  other  reality 
open  to  our  cognizance,  it  dominates  as  known  over  our 
faculty  as  knowing ;  and,  by  its  persistency,  baffles  the 
subtleties  and  survives  the  mutabilities  of  our  suljjective 
conditions.  If  we  pretend  not  to  see  it,  it  still  makes  itself  felt, 
like  the  sunshine,  through  the  closed  lids  ;  and  we  know  that 
the  blaze  is  there  without  a  cloud.  If  we  set  ourselves  to  contend 
against  it,  and  pass  on  without  giving  it  heed,  it  soon  l)rings  to 
us  its  legitimate  mastery,  and  spoils  our  usurped  freedom  by 
timely  prohibition  and  late  reproach.  If  we  try  to  silence  it, 
it  must  be,  not  by  refuting,  but  by  insulting  it ;  and  the  sense 
of  shame  it  leaves  as  it  turns  away  carries  a  constant  echo  of 
the  very  sound  we  would  fain  escape.  Should  we  be  reso- 
lutely intent  on  breaking  the  spell  and  ridding  ourselves  of 
the  haunting  voice,  the  only  possible  way  is  to  act,  not  upon 
it,  but  upon  ourselves  ;  to  render  our  own  organ  of  perception 


Chap.  II.]  GOD   IN  HUMANITY.  69 

too  callous  to  hear  it.  But  not  even  then  is  the  witness 
securely  dead.  Some  shock  of  self-knowledge,  some  pathetic 
breath  of  sorrow,  some  returning  wave  of  retreating  affection, 
may  visit  us  with  recovery,  be  it  only  for  an  hour  or  a  day, 
from  our  moral  deafness  ;  and  instantly  the  forgotten  tones 
flow  in  again,  bringing  a  contrition  all  the  more  passionate 
for  its  arrears,  and  so  giving  evidence  that  it  is  not  thei)  which 
have  ever  perished  from  the  atmosphere,  but  u-e  who  have 
been  asleep  to  music  such  as  theirs.  These  are  the  charac- 
teristic notes  of  permanent  objective  existence, — the  same 
that  assure  us  of  a  world  perceived  beyond  the  range  of  our 
percipient  nature  ;  and  from  the  conclusion  to  which  they 
point  there  is  no  legitimate  escape.  All  minds  born  into  the 
universe  are  ushered  into  the  presence  of  a  real  rir/Jiteonsness 
as  surely  as  into  a  scene  of  actual  space.  And  whatever 
certainty  we  feel  that  that  space  is  unoriginated  and  infinite, 
and  that,  wherever  a  circle  is,  its  intersecting  chords  supply 
equal  rectangles,  the  same  certainty  must  we  feel,  that,  wher- 
ever character  is,  there  must  pity  be  rightful  superior  to 
selfishness,  and  honour  to  perfidy  ;  and  that,  whatever  may 
be  our  own  stage  of  ethical  attainment,  we  look  into 
unmeasured  heights  beyond. 

5.  But  in  what  kind  of  world  must  we  be,  if  this  apparent 
certainty  is  not  to  be  completely  illusory  ?  Suppose  a  human 
being  to  be  standing,  amid  the  tribes  of  natural  liistory,  and 
with  a  companion  or  two  of  his  own  race,  in  an  atheistic 
universe, — dead  space  around  him,  blind  matter  before  him, 
and  a  few  equals  near  him,  forming,  with  himself,  the  supreme 
term  of  the  whole.  Suppose  further, — that  we  may  begrudge 
nothing  to  the  unconscious  genius  of  "  Nature," — that,  through 
some  happy  correspondences  in  the  organic  chemistry  which 
set  him  up  and  made  him  what  he  is,  his  faculties  and  appre- 
hensions have  got  correctly  adjusted  to  the  theatre  on  which 
he  is  planted,  and  Ining  to  him  only  faithful  reports  of  what 
is  there.  How,  on  such  a  stage,  can  he  possibly  have  cogni- 
zance of  an  objective  authority  of  righteousness  higher  than 
himself?  For,  actually,  no  higher  would  he  tliere.  His 
fellows  are  on  his  level,  known  to  him  only  as  himself  over 
again.     Other  forms  of  life  are  below  him,  as  his  servants  or 


70  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I, 

his  foes.  The  earth  is  his  bed,  and  the  sky  his  roof.  Often 
enough,  no  doubt,  may  these  surroundings  press  severely  upon 
him,  and  extort  the  cry  of  conscious  weakness.  But,  what- 
ever his  physical  dependence,  he  is  without  spiritual  superior 
to  give  law  to  him  :  there  is  no  one  who  has  any  title  to  dictate 
to  his  will :  he  is  himself  the  supreme  being  in  the  known 
universe.  If,  therefore,  he  feels,  as  we  do,  a  real  and  rightful 
authority  over  him  ;  if,  face  to  face  with  him,  there  seems  to 
stand  a  justice  and  sanctity  that  claims  him, — his  feeling  is 
adjusted  to  the  wrong  world,  and  is  out  of  place  among  things 
as  they  are.  How  should  he  recognize  a  better,  and  aspire  ? 
It  is  only  the  uneasy  dreamer,  who,  stationed  on  the  highest 
peak,  still  strains  to  climb,  and  finds  no  foothold  on  the 
yielding  air.  Why  should  he  look  up,  when  all  is  blank 
above, — darkness,  and  no  stars  ?  why  kneel  before  nothing, 
fling  out  imploring  arms  into  a  vacancy,  and  sob  forth  his 
contrition  into  a  silence  deaf  and  dumb '?  A  being  placed 
amid  such  conditions  must  either  be  without  moral  intuition, 
and  therefore  something  less  than  human,  or,  in  having  it, 
lie  at  the  mercy  of  a  brilliant  but  hopeless  deception  ;  as  if, 
by  a  strange  mistake,  there  had  stra^^ed  into  him  an  appre- 
hension visionar}^  here,  but  proper  to  some  divine  realm, 
where  a  real  government  prevailed,  of  Spirit  over  spirits,  and 
One  perfectly  holy  communicated  himself  to  minor  natures, 
and  empowered  their  answering  consciousness  to  report  back 
of  him. 

No  suspicion  of  illusion,  however,  against  our  primary 
faculties,  can  be  entertained ;  for  we  have  access  to  no  world 
but  that  which  they  present  to  us,  and  the  account  we  cannot 
check  it  is  our  wisdom  to  take  on  trust.  The  moral  intuition 
exists  ;  and  the  atheistic  universe  vanishes  before  its  face. 
We  know  ourselves  to  be  living  under  command,  and  with 
freedom  to  give  or  withhold  obedience  ;  and  this  lifts  us  at 
once  into  divine  relations,  and  connects  us  with  One  supreme 
in  the  distinguishing  glories  of  personal  existence,  wisdom, 
justice,  holiness.  We  have  only  to  open  a^nd  read  the  creden- 
tials of  conscience,  and  this  discovery  bursts  upon  us  at  once. 
That  sense  of  authority  which  pervades  our  moral  nature, 
and  tempers  it  with  a  silent  reverence,  places  us  under  that 


Chap.  II. 1  GOD  IN  HUMANITY.  71 

which  is  Itiglier  than  ire,  which  has  claims  on  our  perscnaUty, 
and  hovers  over  it,  and  keeps  near  its  proljlems  with  tran- 
scendent presence.  But  the  world  of  nature  and  outward 
l)henomena  has  in  it  nothing  that  is  thus  superhuman ; 
nor  can  matter  and  force,  with  tlieir  linear  necessities  and 
predetermined  tracks  of  successive  effects,  give  the  free  spirit 
its  alternative  law.  And  the  world  of  humanity,  however  rich 
m  saints  and  heroes  who  are  aljove  you  and  me,  and  may 
well  discipline  our  hearts  to  homage,  is  here  all  in  the  same 
case  with  us,  and  hends  low  hefore  the  same  vision.  Seeing, 
then,  that  the  impersonal  cannot  morally  rule  the  personal, 
and  that  over  living  spirit  nothing  short  of  living  spirit 
greater  in  elevation  can  wield  authority,  what  remains  Ijut 
that  we  recognize  the  communion  of  a  divine  Visitant,  and 
accept  the  light  of  conscience  as  no  longer  an  unmeaning 
phosphorescence  of  our  own  nature,  but  as  the  revealing  and 
appealing  look  of  God?  The  wise  and  good  of  every  age 
have  variously  struggled  to  express  in  adequate  terms  the 
solemnit}-  of  human  obligation  ;  but  all  the  strivings  of  their 
thought  have  culminated  in  this:  "  The  word  of  conscience 
is  the  voice  of  God."  To  this,  indeed,  all  the  indications 
lead.  The  law  that  is  over  us,  we  cannot  fail  to  observe,  is  a 
selective  law  :  it  looks,  as  we  have  shown,  at  the  springs  of 
action  togctJicr,  announces  a  comparison  l)etween  them,  and 
tells  the  result :  "  Tliis  is  worthier  than  tJiat."  Such  a  selec- 
tive law  can  issue  from  nothing  but  a  preferential  will.  In 
the  realm  of  nature  and  necessit}'  the  forces  move  right  on  to 
their  determinate  end  ;  compare  nothing,  and  prefer  nothing ; 
and  turn  up,  without  pause  or  scruple,  the  sole  possibility 
given  them  to  execute.  And  this  selective  law  speaks  direct 
to  a  selective  power  in  us :  exalting  tliis  above  tliat,  it  requires 
that  we  should  do  so  too.  It  is  the  appeal  of  will  to  will : 
"  This  is  my  choice  :  be  it  yours  also."  And  so  it  is  nothing 
less  than  the  bending  oi  tlio  (li\ine  holiness  to  train  the 
human ;  the  overflowing  sanctity  of  the  Supreme  Mind,  shed 
forth  to  elicit  by  free  sympathy  the  secret  possibilities  of  ours. 
But  for  this  objective  contact  between  his  Spirit  and  ours, — 
between  the  divine  life  reporting  itself  to  an  apprehensive 
facultv  in  us, — it  would  be  hard  to  understand  how  it  is  that 


72  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

the  human  mind  can  rapidly  pass  to  moral  levels  unreached 
before ;  and  that,  at  some  epochs  of  its  history,  it  seems 
to  seize  at  a  bound  heights  never  sought,  because  never 
imagined.  The  philosophers  who  undertake  to  expound  the 
dynamics  of  society  are  fond  of  telling  us  that  the  character 
of  each  period  is  the  inevitable  result  and  vital  development 
of  its  predecessor,  and  might  be  predicted  from  an  adequate 
survey  of  the  prior  phenomena.  And  doubtless  vast  lines  of 
historical  causation  may  be  successfully  traced  through  some 
of  the  levels  of  human  life,  linking  differing  centuries  into  a 
continuous  system. 

But,  in  the  spiritual  experience  of  nations  and  of  races  there 
are  mighty  paroxysms  which  break  through  the  restraints  of 
this  law,  when,  as  at  the  Christian  era,  a  new  type  of  mind 
and  character,  a  fresh  creation  of  moral  beauty,  bursts  into 
blossom  in  an  ungenial  time,  like  a  delicate  flower  from  a 
rotting  soil ;  or  when,  as  in  the  seventh  century,  a  people 
scarcely  reckoned  in  the  statistics  of  civilization  starts  into 
organized  existence,  and  with  fiery  magnanimity  sweeps  over 
half  the  world  as  the  missionary  of  a  perishing  truth  ;  or 
when,  as  at  the  minor  crises  which  have  given  birth  to 
Protestant  sects,  whole  populations  have  been  carried  off 
their  feet  by  affections  never  felt  before,  and  as  truly  remod- 
elled, in  habit,  thought,  and  aspect,  as  if  they  had  risen  from 
the  dead.  No  study  of  the  antecedent  aggregate  of  con- 
ditions enables  you  to  give  account  of  these  leaps  of  trans- 
formation ;  else  why  are  they  not  foreseen  by  some  philoso- 
pher's appreciative  eye?  The  utmost  that  your  scrutiny  can 
eff'ect  is  to  point  to  some  predisposing  influences  which  might 
affect  the  temper  of  the  time,  and  warm  many  a  mind  into 
the  ready  fuel  of  reaction.  This,  however,  goes  but  a  very 
little  way  to  meet  the  facts  before  us.  Eeaction  is  a  swing 
back  into  the  old  ;  and  here  we  have  a  seizure  of  the  new, — 
a  spring  to  loftier  levels  of  original  character,  where  speech 
has  tones,  and  action,  attitudes,  and  art,  varieties  of  form, 
quite  strange  before.  And  whence  the  kindling  power,  the 
lightning  flash  of  genius  or  inspiration,  to  pierce  the  passive 
fuel,  and  compel  it  into  a  blaze  ?  Is  this,  too, — this  living 
force  without  which  a  world  ever  so  "  predisposed  "  lies  dead, 


Chap.  II. J        •  GOD   IN  HUMANITY.  73 

and  refuses  to  "  react," — the  necessary  product  of  the  pre- 
ceding age '?  and  will  you  father  the  new  ideals  upon  old, 
worn-out  deformities  ?  Is  it  from  the  Jewish  rigour  and  self- 
assertion  that  you  deduce  the  meekness  and  self-sacrilice  of 
Christ,  or  from  the  Pagan  dissoluteness  that  you  explain  the 
Christian  purity  ?  If  so,  why  does  not  every  odious  form  of 
character  bring  its  own  redemption,  and  corruption  arrest 
itself,  instead  of  spread '?  Thus  to  treat  the  contagion  of 
vice  as  the  seed-plot  of  holiness  is  indeed  to  seek  "  grapes 
from  thorns,  and  figs  from  thistles."  It  must  needs  be  that 
the  redeemers  of  mankind  arise  in  times  which  require 
redemption ;  but  to  assign  this  concurrence  as  an  adequate 
account  of  their  existence  and  characteristics  is  to  overlook 
the  living  cause  in  the  circumstantial  condition.  It  is  not 
merely  with  a  stand  against  declension,  with  a  tenacity  of 
right  habit  in  resistance  to  decay,  with  a  protest  of  unspoiled 
feeling  against  sinking  life,  that  we  have  here  to  deal ;  t]d>i, 
perhaps,  the  inertia  of  lingering  goodness  already  there 
might  sufficiently  explain  :  but  it  is  the  positive  creation  of 
fresh  images  of  perfection,  a  recoil  from  the  lower  which 
already  carries  in  it  dreams  of  the  higher,  an  expostulation 
with  the  present,  which,  not  content  with  seeing  the  better 
past,  presses  into  a  previously  unimagined  future.  This 
dawning  of  unsuspected  lights  within  rare  and  exceptional 
natures  is  no  mere  human  phenomenon,  explicable  by  our 
reciprocal  mental  action  :  it  betrays  the  overarching  presence 
of  brighter  skies.  Among  the  societies  of  men,  it  is  ever 
the  greater  spirits  that  morally  sustain  the  less ;  and,  as  the 
scale  of  realized  excellence  ascends,  the  conscience  of  us  all 
is  ashamed  to  linger,  and  eventually  rises  too.  We  are  lifted 
by  the  souls  of  mightier  wing,  and  are  set  where  otherwise 
our  feet  would  not  have  climbed :  and,  were  we  without  this 
hierarchy  of  moral  ranks,  tliere  would  l)e  nothing  ennobling 
in  our  interdependence ;  and  no  healing  would  tlow  down,  no 
reverence  pass  up,  from  link  to  liiik.  Once  upon  the  Hat, 
upon  the  fiat  we  stay.  But  what,  then,  is  it  that  sustains  the 
sii))uiiit-minds  ?  that  kindles  them  with  light  thev  cannot 
borrow,  and  fires  them  with  strength  that  no  man  can  lend  ? 
Have   they   escaped   the  law    of    dependence,    and    become 


74  A  UTHORITY   IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

original  springs,  first  inventors,  of  a  non-existent  righteous- 
ness ?     Go  to  them,  and  judge  from  the  manner  of  their  hfe 
and  the  temper  of  their  affections  ^Yhether  it  be  so.     Do  they 
stand  upon  the  earth  as  creative  gods,  with  lordly  mien,  and 
will  that  is  all  their  own  ?     Do  they  know  their  height  to  l)e 
supreme,  and  stoop  with  the  pity  of  a  superior  to  the  subject 
crowd  beneath  ?     Or  do  you  see  them  with  still  uplifted  face, 
and  bending  low  before  a  Holiest  of  all '?  nay,  with  the  very 
light  that    most    transfigures    them   glistening   through    the 
streaming  tears  of    a  tender  penitence  ?     Is  not  their  calm, 
their  strength,  their  fearlessness,  more  than  any  man's,  free 
from,  self-assertion,  and  an  expression  of  pure  dependence  and 
perfect  trust  ?     And  the  tender  mercy  which  flows  from  voice 
and  hand  as  they  mingle  with  mankind^is  it  theirs  alone, 
without  a  partner  in  it,  and  with  only  autocratic  look  towards 
the  sorrows  it  relieves  '?     Or  is  it  rather  a  divine  compassion, 
that  moves  through  them  as  its    organ,  and  glorifies  with 
sympathy  a  created  spirit  as  it  goes '?     No  :  they  feel,  not 
less,  but  far  more,  than  others,  the  law  of  objective  contact 
with   higher   mind   as   the   condition   of   moral  insight  and 
spiritual  power ;  and  unless  we  charge  our  highest  witnesses 
with  illusions  in  that  which  is  especially  their  own,  and  so 
reject  whatever  we  have  that  is  supremely  trustworthy,  we 
must  carry  that  law  beyond  our  mutual  relations,  and  recog- 
nize the  fires  of  God  in  the  glow  which  kindles  the  summits 
of  this  world. 

This  new  and  spiritual  function  ascribed  to  God  is  but  the 
just  sequel,  as  we  ascend  the  gradations  of  being,  to  his 
prior  indwelling  in  the  world.  As  the  forces  of  Nature  are 
his  causality,  and  the  instincts  of  the  creature  his  seeing 
guidance  of  the  blind  ;  so  the  alternative  apprehensions  of 
conscience  are  the  preferential  lights  of  his  moral  nature,  the 
first  reporting  his  power,  the  second  his  wisdom,  the  third  his 
righteousness.  That  it  is  the  same  one  life  which  is  the 
ground  of  all  is  plain  from  the  intertexture  of  the  whole  :  for 
it  is  amongst  the  instinctive  impulses  of  the  animated  world 
that  the  problems  of  ethical  experience  first  arise  ;  and  it  is 
through  the  physical  constitution  of  nature,  and  of  our  own 
organism  in  particular,  that  many  of   the  penalties  of  the 


Chap.  II.]  GOD   IN  HUMANITY.  75 

moral  la^Y  make  themselves  felt.  The  causality  of  the  world, 
therefore,  is  at  the  disposal  of  the  all-holy  "Will  ;  and  whether 
within  us  or  without  us,  in  the  distant  stellar  spaces  or  in  the 
self-conscious  life  of  the  tempted  or  aspiring  mind,  we  are  in 
one  divine  embrace, — "  God  over  all,  blessed  for  ever." 

Here,  too,  we  reach  the  precise  point  of  transition  from 
morals  to  religion,  and  step  across  the  boundary  from  Pagan 
nobleness  to  Christian  sanctity.  Divine  guidance  has  never 
and  nowhere  failed  to  men  ;  nor  has  it  ever,  in  the  most 
essential  things,  largely  differed  amongst  them  :  but  it  has 
not  alwaj^s  been  recognized  as  divine,  much  less  as  the  living 
contact  of  Spirit  with  spirit, — the  communion  of  affection 
between  God  and  man.  While  conscience  remained  an 
impersonal  law,  stern  and  silent,  with  only  a  jealous  Nemesis 
behind,  man  had  to  stand  up  alone,  and  work  out  for  himself 
his  independent  magnanimity ;  and  he  could  only  be  the 
pagan  hero.  "When  conscience  was  found  to  be  inseparably 
blended  with  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  to  speak  in  tones  immedi- 
ately divine,  it  became  the  very  shrine  of  worship  :  its  strife, 
its  repentance,  its  aspirations,  passed  into  the  incidents  of  a 
living  drama,  with  its  crises  of  alienation  and  reconcilement ; 
and  the  cold  obedience  to  a  m^-sterious  necessity  was  exchanged 
for  the  allegiance  of  personal  affection.  And  this  is  the  true 
emergence  from  the  darkness  of  ethical  law  to  the  tender 
light  of  the  life  divine.  The  veil  falls  from  the  shadowed  face 
of  moral  authority,  and  the  directing  love  of  the  all-holy 
God  shines  forth. 


76 


CHAPTEE   III. 

UTILITARIAN    SUBSTITUTE    FOR   AUTHORITY. 

The  sketch  which  in  preceding  chapters  has  been  given  of 
our  human  nature,  has  been  drawn  wholly  from  the  interior  ; 
and  how  far  it  is  true,  how  far  a  fancy  picture,  must  be  deter- 
mined by  each  one's  reflective  self-knowledge.  The  facts  to 
which  it  refers,  and  on  which  it  rests  its  appeal,  are  not 
palpable  and  visible  upon  the  stage  of  overt  action,  but  lie 
behind  the  scenes,  and  can  be  affirmed  or  denied  only  by  those 
who  will  carry  their  scrutiny  thither.  They  are  simply  these. 
We  are  sent  into  the  world,  charged  with  a  number  of  in- 
stincts, each,  when  alone,  darkly  urging  us  towards  its  own 
object ;  but  all,  when  thrown  into  various  competitions  to- 
gether, lighted  up  with  intuitive  knowledge  of  their  own 
relative  worth  and  rights  ;  so  that  we  are  never  left  in  doubt 
which  of  two  simultaneous  impulses  has  the  nobler  claim 
upon  us.  This  natural  estimate  is  what  we  mean  by  conscience. 
It  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  values  of  external  actions,  but 
only  with  the  comparative  authority  of  their  inward  springs  ; 
it  gives  no  foresight  of  effects,  but  only  insight  into  obligation 
at  its  source.  But  this  it  does  with  revelation  so  clear,  so 
solemn,  so  consentaneous  for  all  men,  that  those  who  will  not 
own  it  to  be  divine  can  never  find  a  voice  of  which  it  is  the 
echo  in  our  humanity. 

The  problems  of  human  conduct,  however,  may  be 
approached  from  the  other  end.  They  may  be  looked  at  from 
the  outside,  and  traced  through  their  sphere  of  visible  opera- 
tion, in  the  hope  of  separating,  by  some  serviceable  rule,  the 
actions  which  work  well  from  those  which  work  ill.  Whoever 
moves  along  this  path  in  order  to  take  his  measurements  of 
human  character,  exercises  a  different  order  of  sagacious 
habit,  and  naturally  objects  to  every  form  of  intuitive  doctrine 
as  "  sentimental  "  or  "  mystical."     The  inward  facts  on  which 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.  77 

it  rests  are  seen  by  a  kind  of  light  to  which  his  eye  does  not 
readily  adapt  itself ;  and  even  if  he  recognizes  them  as  there 
at  all,  he  cannot  believe  them  to  be  really  indigenous  to  that 
indistinct  and  barren  interior,  and  traces  them  to  some 
winged  seeds  of  accident  blown  over  the  fence  by  the  winds  of 
circumstance  from  the  sunny  fields  of  his  favourite  outer 
world.  For  him,  the  values  of  action  are  found,  not  up 
among  its  springs,  but  down  in  its  issues  ;  nor  is  one  affec- 
tion better  than  another,  except  as  it  Ijids  fair  to  be  more 
fruitful  of  beneficent  deeds  ;  so  that  all  moral  judgment  is 
turned  upside  down,  if  we  estimate  the  act  by  its  incentive, 
instead  of  the  incentive  by  its  act.  Once  allow  this  inversion, 
and  you  provide,  as  he  protests,  an  excuse  for  every  well- 
meant  enormity ;  for  the  mischievous  asceticism  and  mon- 
strous license  between  which  superstition  oscillates  ;  for  the 
bad  faith  deliberately-  shown  to  heretics  ;  for  the  cruel  per- 
secutions against  which  the  tender  mercies  of  conscience  have 
afforded  no  guarantee.  This  judgment  by  sentiment  it  is  that 
hinders  all  rational  agreement  about  the  relative  worth  of 
actions,  and  leaves  men  to  tiing  about  their  approbation  at 
random,  elevating  into  a  virtue  in  one  age  A^iiat  is  punished 
as  a  crime  in  another.  Not,  he  insists,  till  we  turn  them  from 
the  mutabilities  of  feeling  to  the  appreciation  of  steady  facts, 
and  teach  them  to  consult  the  external  operation  of  conduct 
as  the  sole  definite  rule  of  admeasurement,  will  their  chaos  of 
contradictions  fall  into  order,  and  the  exactitude  of  science 
silence  the  wranglings  of  conflicting  morals.  Nor  is  it  doubt- 
ful what  the  standard  of  valuation  must  be  ;  for  there  is  luit 
one  end  given  to  our  nature,  viz.  happiness  ;  that  is,  the 
attainment  of  pleasure  in  its  various  kinds,  and  the  avoidance 
of  pain  :  and  only  as  a  means  to  this,  or  as  a  part  of  it,  can 
anything  else  have  place  as  a  secondary  end.  This  proposi- 
tion, though  never  stated  except  for  a  controversial  purpose, 
and  in  the  face  of  those  who  denv  it,  has  alwavs  been  com- 
mended  to  its  own  self-evidence,  as  if  it  could  dispense  with 
the  support  of  proof.  Epicurus  thought  it  enough  to  predicate 
of  pleasure  that  it  was  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  desirable 
life,  our  primary  and  natural  good,  the  source  of  every 
preference  and  rejection,  the  rule  l>y  which  we  estimate  all 


78  A  UTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

else  at  which  we  ami.*  That  it  held  this  supreme  position 
was  a  first-hand  certainty,  as  little  needing  or  admitting 
corroboration  as  the  statement  that  fire  is  hot  and  snow  is 
white. t  "  Pleasm-e  and  pain,"  says  Bentham,  "  govern  us  in 
all  we  do,  in  all  we  say,  in  all  we  think  :  every  effort  we  can 
make  to  throw^  off  our  subjection,  will  but  serve  to  demonstrate 
and  confirm  it.  In  words  a  man  may  pretend  to  abjure  their 
empire  ;  but  in  reality  he  will  remain  subject  to  it  all  the 
while.  The  princijile  of  utilitij  recognizes  this  subjection,  and 
assumes  it  for  the  foundation  of  that  system  the  object  of 
which  is  to  rear  the  fabric  of  felicity  by  the  hands  of  reason 
and  of  law."^  "  A  man  acts,"  says  James  Mill,  "  for  the 
sake  of  something  agreeable  to  him,  either  proximately  or 
remotely.  But  agreeable  to,  and  pleasant  to  ;  agreeableness 
and  pleasantness  are  only  different  names  for  the  same  thing ; 
the  pleasantness  of  a  thing  is  the  pleasure  it  gives.  So  that 
pleasure  in  a  general  way,  or  speaking  generically,  that  is,  in 
a  way  to  include  all  the  specimens  of  pleasure  and  also  the 
abatements  of  pain,  is  the  end  of  action. "§  "The  creed," 
says  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  "  which  accepts  as  the  foundation  of 
morals,  Utility,  or  the  Greatest  Happiness  principle,  holds  that 
actions  are  right  in  proportion  as  they  tend  to  promote  happi- 
ness, wrong  as  they  tend  to  produce  the  reverse  of  happiness. 
By  happiness  is  intended  pleasure,  and  the  absence  of  pain  ; 
by  unhappiness,  pain  and  the  privation  of  pleasure."  And 
he  states  as  "  the  theory  of  life  on  which  this  theory  of 
morality  is  grounded, — that  pleasure  and  freedom  from  pain 
are  the  only  things  desirable  as  ends,  and  that  all  desirable 
things  (which  are  as  numerous  in  the  utilitarian  as  in  any 
other  scheme)  ai'e  desirable  either  for  the  pleasure  inherent  in 

*  Epicurus  ap.  Diog.  Laert.  128,  129.  Trjv  ^8ovrii>,  apxr)v  km  reXos  \iyoniv 
(ivai  Tov  naKapiais  ^t/i'.  ravTrjV  -yap  ayaObv  irpuiTOv  koI  avyyeviKov  eyuiopeu, 
Kui  OTTO  TavTT]s  KnTap)(6p.e6(i  Trdarji  aipidfuts  kui  (pvyij?,  kol  iirl  tcwttju 
KciTciyTcopev,  wj  kcwovi.  rc5  Trddei  irdv  uyaduu  KplvovTfs. 

t  Cicero  de  Finibus,  I.  9.  Negat  opus  esse  ratioue  neque  disputatione, 
quamobrem  voluptas  expetenda,  fugiendus  dolor  sit.  Sentiri  hoc  putat,  ut 
calere  ignem,  nivem  esse  albam,  dulce  mel,  quorum  nihil  oportere  exquisitis 
rationibus  confirmare  ;  tautum  satis  admonere. 

t  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  chap.  i.  §  1. 

§  Fragment  on  IMackiutosh,  Appendix  A,  p.  389. 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.  79 

themselves,  or  as  means  to  the  promotion  of  pleasure  and  the 
prevention  of  pain."*  As  this  is  the  sole  possible  object  of 
desire,  so  is  it  at  once  the  solitary  means  of  influence,  the 
exclusive  source  of  obligation,  and  the  invariable  standard  of 
all  good  :  and  human  actions  must  be  approved  in  proportion 
as  they  apparently  tend  to  increase  human  pleasures  or  abate 
human  pains.  "  According  to  the  Greatest  Happiness  prin- 
ciple," says  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  "  the  ultimate  end,  with  reference 
to  and  for  the  sake  of  which  all  other  things  are  desiral)le 
(whether  we  are  considering  our  own  good  or  that  of  other 
people),  is  an  existence  exempt  as  far  as  possible  from  pain, 
and  as  rich  as  possible  in  enjoyments,  both  in  point  of 
quantity  and  quality."  "  This  being,  according  to  the 
Utilitarian  opinion,  the  end  of  human  action,  is  necessarily 
also  the  standard  of  morality ;  which  may  accordingly  be 
defined,  the  rules  and  precepts  for  human  conduct,  by  the 
observance  of  which  an  existence  such  as  has  been  described 
might  be,  to  the  greatest  extent  possible,  secured  to  all  man- 
kind ;  and  not  to  them  only,  but,  so  far  as  the  nature  of 
things  admits,  to  the  whole  sentient  creation. "f  To  guard  us 
against  any  partial  or  selfish  application  of  this  rule,  it  is 
added,  that,  in  making  our  estimate,  we  must  give  no  superior 
weight  to  our  own  share,  but  impartially  remember  that 
others'  happiness  is  worth  as  much  as  our  own ;  and  take 
care  that  "  everybody  shall  count  for  one,  and  nobody  for 
more  than  one."t 

Such  are  the  two  chief  types  of  ethical  doctrine  :  of  which 
the  one  betakes  itself  to  the  inward  impulses,  and  finds  an 
order  of  natural  ranks  among  them  ;  while  the  other  resorts 
to  the  outward  products  in  conduct,  and  applies  a  calculus  of 
happiness  for  their  admeasurement.  Notwithstanding  their 
seeming  opposition,  each  doctrine  speaks  with  a  telling  voice 
to  some  part  or  other  of  our  nature  :  the  one  in  tones  of 
deeper  harmony  to  the  whispers  of  the  meditative  mind  ;  the 
other,  in  the  sharper  language  of  the  courts  and  of  the  street. 
And  each,  too,  it  must  be  confessed,  seems  to  leave  us  with  a 
want  unsatisfied.     The  one,  fond  of  lingering  aloft  to  breathe 

*  Utilitariaui.sm,  pp.  U,  10.  t  Ibid.  p.  17. 

X  Ibid.  p.  91. 


8o  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

a  religious  atmosphere,  is  too  apt  to  miss  its  way  and  stumble, 
when  held  down  in  the  tangle  of  human  relations  and  engaged 
with  the  concrete  problems  of  the  hour.  The  other,  while 
skilfully  balancing  the  merits  of  social  usage  and  personal 
habit,  seems  to  strain  itself  out  of  character  when  it  assumes 
the  higher  language  of  Duty,  and  can  hardly  fall  into  tune 
with  the  plaint  of  human  confession,  or  the  pathos  of  a 
saintly  joy.  Can  we  then  distribute  to  each  its  proper  part '? 
Or  must  they  treat  one  another  as  irreconcilable  enemies,  and 
fight  it  out  till  the  sole  empire  has  been  awarded  by  the 
reason  of  mankind '? 

I.  Let  it  be  admitted  at  once,  that  the  doctrine  of 
Conscience  cannot  do  the  work  which  the  doctrine  of  Utility 
accomplishes. 

1.  This  becomes  clear,  the  moment  we  ask  what  it  is  that 
these  two  lights  i)rofess  to  show  us.  The  one  is  set  up  among 
the  springs  of  action  ;  the  other  is  set  down  among  its  efifects. 
The  one  tells  us  what  present  incentive  is  noblest ;  the  other, 
what  future  results  will  be  happiest ;  and  though  we  must 
start  by  the  incentive  light  of  the  former,  we  must  arrive  by 
the  calculated  signals  of  the  latter.  When  we  have  flung 
our  tempters  aside,  and  given  ourselves  up  to  the  right  in- 
centive, it  may  well  be  that  only  the  first  stage  of  our  problem 
has  been  solved  ;  for,  with  that  one  incentive  many  lines  of 
action  may  be  compatible  ;  and  among  these  it  will  yet  remain 
for  us  to  make  our  choice.  Am  I  conscious,  for  instance,  of  a 
wrong  against  my  brother  "?  And  have  I  conquered  my  pride, 
and  resolved  to  make  reparation '?  The  question  immediately 
rises,  in  what  form  shall  I  render  satisfaction  to  his  claims  ? 
Shall  I  make  public  confession  ?  Or  shall  I  go  to  his  house 
and  humble  myself  before  him?  Or,  lest  bitter  memories 
should  there  prolong  themselves  with  words,  shall  I  repent  in 
self-sacrificing  and  expressive  action  ?  Or,  again  :  have  I 
become  ashamed  of  too  self-indulgent  a  life  amid  the  miseries 
of  men,  and  determined  to  deny  myself  largely  on  their  be- 
half '?  It  is  well ;  for  Conscience  requires  no  less.  But  what 
direction  shall  my  purpose  take '?  Shall  I  go  into  a  monastery 
and  give  up  mj^  goods  ?  Shall  I  found  a  hospital  ?  Shall  I 
organize  and  manage  a  reformatory '?     Shall  I  take  pity  on 


Chap.  III. J  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.   8i 

the  west-country  labourers,  and  create  there  a  model  estate  ? 
These  ulterior  questions  it  would  be  al)surd,  and,  except  to  a 
fanatic,  impossible,  to  settle  by  any  pretended  intuitive  light  ; 
they  can  be  resolved  only  by  careful  study  of  each  scheme 
in  its  natural  working  on  the  well-being  of  all  whom  it 
affects.  If  Conscience  selects  the  right  affection,  Utility 
determines  the  fitting  action  ;  nor,  without  consulting  it, 
is  there  any  guarantee  against  the  perpetration  of  well- 
intended  mischiefs,  which  may  bring  the  purest  impulses 
into  contempt.  Viewed  in  this  relation,  the  second  doctrine 
supplements  the  first,  and  steps  in  to  remedy  its  imperfect 
competency.  Only,  it  must  not  enter  before  its  time  :  not  till 
Conscience  has  spoken,  is  Utility  to  be  taken  into  counsel ;  it 
has  a  diploma  for  the  executive  Art  of  Ethics  ;  but  is  an 
impostor  in  the  primary  Science. 

2.  In  truth,  the  rule  which  it  supplies,  however  indispen- 
sable for  giving  effect  to  our  highest  aims,  is  not  reall}^  Moral 
at  all,  distinguishing  right  from  wrong ;  Ijut  simply  liationd, 
distinguishing  wise  from  foolish.  You  condemn,  on  grounds 
of  Utility,  the  institution  of  foundling  hospitals,  or  the 
Catholic  latitude  of  alms-giving,  and  prefer  to  spend  your 
resources  in  lifting,  by  education  and  sympathy,  some  de- 
pressed class  into  permanent  self-help  ?  What  is  the  differ- 
ence between  you  and  your  mediaeval-minded  neighbour  ? 
Are  you  more  charitable,  or  only  more  soiaihle,  than  he  '?  Is  it 
a  distinction  of  character,  or  one  of  jii<hiiiicnt,  that  separates 
you  ?  Do  you  regret  that  he  is  not  a  better  man,  or  only  that 
he  is  not  a  tciser  .^  If  the  benevolence  of  both  arises  under 
the  same  inward  conditions,  and  from  conquest  of  the  same 
temptations,  you  assuredly  stand  upon  the  same  moral  level, 
and  the  interval  between  you  is  simply  intellectual.  You 
merit  the  same  approval ;  of  neither  can  we  saj%  that  he 
stands  nearer  to  the  love  of  God.  And  did  we  propose  to 
convert  your  neighbour  to  your  state  of  mind,  it  uuist  be,  not 
by  the  machinery  of  moral  correction,  but  by  methods  of 
intellectual  persuasion.  Supposing  our  appeal  to  him  success- 
ful, we  shall  save  him  in  future  from  a  JihiinJer  only,  and  not 
from  a  ain.  Am  I  charged  with  confounding  the  morality  of 
the  agent  and  the  morality  of  the  act,  and  told  that,  tbougli 

G 


82  A  UTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

the  alms-giver  may  be  a  good  man,  his  ahiis-giving  is  a  bad 
act '?  I  do  not  bhndly  confound  them,  but  openly  identify 
them,  and  unhesitatingly  say  that  I  know  of  no  morality  in 
an  act  except  the  morality  of  its  Agent ;  nor  can  I  approve  of 
him  as  its  doer,  yet  disapprove  of  it  as  his  deed.  Bad  indeed, 
in  another  and  unmoral  sense,  the  act  may  be  ;  it  may  be 
injudicious,  may  miss  its  end,  and  work  harm  instead ; 
but  bad  it  cannot  be,  in  the  sense  in  which  he  is  good.  Since, 
indeed,  the  moral  quality  attaches  exclusively  to  the  inner 
springs  of  affection,  apart  from  which  the  most  beneficent 
activities  would  be  but  the  munificence  of  nature,  and  not 
products  of  character,  an  act,  once  issued  from  its  source,  has 
already  got  its  ethical  complexion,  which  cannot  be  altered  by 
its  later  history. 

The  unqualified  terms  which  I  have  here  used  in  ethicall}' 
excusing  nobly-prompted  acts  of  mistake  are  deliberately 
chosen,  in  order  to  bring  into  the  strongest  light  the  essential 
contrast  between  the  two  theories  which  we  are  comparing. 

"  The  Utilitarian  moralists,"  as  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  very  truly 
says,  "  have  gone  beyond  almost  all  others  in  affirming  that 
the  motive  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  morality  of  the  action."* 
Bentham  habitually  insists  that  the  words  of  praise  or  dis- 
praise which  express  our  moral  judgments  have  no  application 
to  motives;  that  the  epithets  good  and  had,  virtuous  and 
vicious,  which  properly  belong  to  actions,  and  their  conse- 
quences actual  or  contemj^lated,  cannot  be  attached  to  the 
springs  of  action,  without  giving  rise  to  "  practical  errors  of 
the  very  first  importance."  The  "Motive,"  he  says,  "is 
always  some  pleasure,  or  some  pain ;  some  pleasure,  which 
the  act  is  expected  to  be  the  means  of  continuing  or  producing ; 
some  pain,  which  it  is  expected  to  be  the  means  of  discontinu- 
ing or  preventing.  A  motive  is  substantially  nothing  more 
than  this  pleasure  or  pain,  operating  in  a  certain  manner. 
Now  pleasure  is  in  itsdf  a  good  ;  nay  even,  setting  aside 
immunity  from  pain,  the  only  good :  pain  is  in  itself  an  evil ; 
and  indeed,  without  exception,  the  onW  evil;  or  else  the  words 
good  and  evil  have  no  meaning.  And  this  is  alike  true  of 
every  sort  of  pain,  and  of  every  sort  of  pleasure.     It  follows, 

*  utilitarianism,  p.  2G. 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.   83 

therefore,  necessarily  and  incontestably,  that  "■  i]i(>r('  is  no  skcIi 
tiling  as  any  sort  of  motive  that  is  in  itself  a  Jjad  one.''*  And 
a  more  expHcit  argument  to  the  same  effect  he  introduces 
with  the  following  proposition  :  "As  there  is  not  any  sort  of 
'pleasure,  the  enjoyment  of  which,  if  taken  by  itself,  is  not  a 
good  (taken  by  itself,  that  is,  on  the  supposition  that  it  is  not 
preventive  of  a  more  than  equivalent  pleasure,  or  productive  of 
more  than  equivalent  jxiin)  ;  nor  any  sort  of  pain,  from  which, 
taken  in  like  manner  by  itself,  the  exemption  is  not  a  good  : 
.  in  a  word,  as  there  is  not  any  sort  of  pleasure  that  is 
not  in  itself  a  good,  nor  any  sort  of  p)ain  the  ejiemption  from 
which  is  not  a  good ;  and  as  nothing  but  the  expectation  of 
the  eventual  enjoyment  of  pleasure  in  some  shape,  or  (jf 
exemption  from  pain  in  some  shape,  can  operate  in  the 
character  of  a  motive : — a  necessary  consequence  is  that,  if 
by  motive  be  meant  sort  of  motive,  there  is  not  any  such  thing 
as  a  had  motive ;  no,  nor  any  such  thing  as  a  motive  which, 
to  the  exclusion  of  any  other,  can  with  propriety  he  termed  a 
good  motive." t 

Later  Utilitarians  have  not  been  quite  faithful  to  this  para- 
doxical rule,  that  only  Acts  and  not  Motives  are  objects  of 
moral  appreciation.  "  Virtue,"  we  learn  from  -James  Mill, 
"  is  the  name  of  Prudence,  Fortitude,  Justice,  and  Beneficence, 
all  taken  together  ;  it  is  also,  like  the  name  of  each  of  the 
species  included  under  it,  at  once  the  name  of  the  Aflection, 
the  Motive,  and  the  Disposition."!  And  the  statement  is 
repeated  with  an  addition  :  "  Virtue,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a 
name  which  is  given  to  each  of  the  three,  the  Affection,  the 
Motive,  and  the  Disposition ;  Morality  is  a  name  which  is 
applied  with  similar  latitude. "§  "With  this  account,  so  curi- 
ously at  variance  with  Benthain's,  the  author's  own  practice 
is  in  harmony.  When  he  speaks  of  "  the  man  Avho  takes  the 
virtuous  course,  tJiat  is,  obeys  the  virtuous  motive,",,  he  not 
only  allows  a  moral  quality  to  the  motive,   but  identifies  the 

•  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  x.  §§  ix.  x.  p.  1G9. 

+  Table  of  the  Springs  of  Action,  II.  §  4.     Works,  Part  I.  pp.  21i,  215. 

*  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind,  ch.  xxiii.  vol.  ii.  p.  288. 
J.  S.  Mill's  edition. 

§  Ibid.  p.  302.  II  Ibid.  p.  270. 

(.1    ^ 


84  AUTHORITY  LM PLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

morality  of  the  act  with  it ;  and  when  he  more  than  once 
deplores  the  "feeble  operation"  of  particular  "motives," 
social,  domestic,  patriotic,  philanthropic,  and  refers  to  the 
higher  associations  which  form  them  as  among  the  "  most 
ennobling  of  all  states  of  hmnan  consciousness,"*  we  see  how 
the  artificial  lines  of  system  melt  away  at  the  first  fervent 
touch  of  moral  enthusiasm.  Not  less  distinct  is  Mr.  J.  S. 
Mill's  admission  that  "  with  the  worth  of  the  agent,"  though 
not  "  with  the  morality  of  the  act,"  the  motive  has  "  much 
to  do,"!  and  that,  as  a  right  action  (by  the  Utilitarian 
standard)  "does  not  necessarily  indicate  a  virtuous  character," 
so  "  actions  which  are  blamable  often  proceed  from  qualities 
entitled  to  praise.  When  this  is  apparent,"  he  says,  "  it 
modifies  our  estimation,  not  certainly  of  the  act,  but  of  the 
agent. ":[  Here,  though  the  outward  act  is  reserved  for  ethical 
valuation  on  its  own  account,  its  inward  spring  is  also  allowed 
to  be  a  proper  object  of  moral  estimate  ;  and  the  treatment  of 
motives  as  lying  wholly  beyond  the  sphere  of  approbation  or 
censure  is  plainly  abandoned.  To  complete  the  history  of 
this  surrender,  the  need  of  it  has  been  still  more  explicitly 
avowed  by  Mr.  John  Morley ;  who,  not  content  with  the 
qualified  concession  just  cited,  urges  that,  in  measuring  the 
morality  of  an  act,  it  is  impossible  to  omit  its  motive  from 
the  account.  "Might  it  not  be  said,"  he  asks,  "with  all 
deference  to  the  thinker  who  has  done  so  much  to  reconstruct 
and  perfect  the  Utilitarian  system,  that  as  the  morality  of 
action  depends  on  the  happiness  of  all  persons  affected  by  it, 
there  can  be  no  reason  for  excluding  the  agent  from  the 
number  of  those  persons ;  that  his  motive  reacts  with  full 
power  upon  his  character,  strengthening  or  weakening  this  or 
that  disposition  or  habit ;  and  therefore  that  the  effect  of  the 
motive  ought  to  be  taken  into  account  in  computing  the  total 
of  the  consequences  of  the  act?"  "At  any  rate,  there  is 
nothing  to  hinder  us,  on  Utilitarian  principles,  from  praising 
and  blaming  motives.     We  may  judge  motive  and  act  apart, 

*  Analysis  of   the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  INIind,  vol.  ii.  pp.  272,  273, 
276,  278.     J.  S.  Mill's  edition, 
t  Utilitarianism,  p.  26. 
:;:  Ibid.  pp.  27,  28. 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.  85 

but  the  motive  is  judged  equally."*  These  three  ^Yritel•s  then 
take  off  the  interdict  imposed  by  their  predecessor,  and  allow 
the  motive  spring  of  action  to  come  into  court  for  judgment. 
In  passing  sentence  on  it,  however,  and  in  assigning  their 
relative  worth  to  the  several  kinds  of  motive,  they  merely 
extend  to  the  inward  fact  the  same  rule  by  which  they  appre- 
ciate the  outward  deed ;  they  estimate  it  by  its  consequences 
of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  regard  as  groundless  every  verdict 
of  approval  or  censure  which  does  not,  in  the  last  resort,  rest 
upon  this  basis.  No  intrinsic  value  is  attributed  to  any  in- 
centive ;  no  inherent  relative  authority,  which  imparts  a  moral 
character  to  resulting  action  ;  but  only  a  greater  or  less  power 
of  producing  or  preventing  happiness.  Nay,  more  :  this  power 
chiefly  consists  in  the  tendency  to  create  repeated  acts  of  the 
same  kind,  whether  of  benefit  or  mischief ;  and  such  fruitful- 
ness  in  homogeneous  consequences  affords  the  main  reason  for 
praising  or  blaming  a  given  motive.  So  that  it  is  only  in  a 
derivative  way  that  the  spring  of  conduct  is  admitted  at  all  to 
ethical  valuation ;  it  simply  borrows  a  moral  character  from 
the  overt  acts  to  which  it  leads ;  and  they  remain,  after  all, 
the  sole  primary  object-matter  with  which  the  moralist  has 
to  deal ;  keeping  an  ethical  complexion  constant  and  defined 
through  all  possible  changes  of  the  inward  impulse  which  may 
issue  them. 

In  direct  contradiction  to  this  order  of  dependence,  I  submit 
that  actions,  apart  from  their  motive  source,  possess  no  moral 
character  whatsoever  ;  that  the  hedonistic  estimate  and  classi- 
fication of  them  under  this  condition  is  a  purely  rational  affair, 
which  might  take  place  in  a  world  and  among  races  wholly 
7(/tmoral ;  that  the  differences  which  constitute  duty,  and 
introduce  us  to  the  shades  of  right  and  wrong,  lie  up  among 
the  mental  incentives  to  volition  ;  and  that  thence  alone  is 
any  ethical  complexion  or  obligatory  aspect  contributed  to  the 
external  actions  wliich  we  put  forth.  Among  the  springs  of 
action  are  found,  nc  doubt,  both  self-regarding  and  social 
affections,  which,  in  their  proper  place,  make  binding  upon  us 
a  consideration  of  others'  happiness  and  of  our  own  :  but  the 
pleasures  thus  drawn  within  the  horizon  of  duty  do  not  on 

"  Fortnightly  Review,  May,  1869,  p.  532. 


86  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  i. 

that  account  constitute  and  define  it  ;  nor  is  a  disturbed 
vision  or  a  false  reckoning  of  them  to  be  condemned  as  an 
immorality,  but  only  deplored  as  an  illusion.  The  calculus  of 
consequences  is  an  indispensable  instrument  for  giving  the 
best  effect  to  the  rightly-adjusted  forces  of  character  ;  only,  to 
wield  and  apply  it  well  is  the  function,  not  of  goodness,  but  of 
sagacity.  While  therefore  it  is  perfectly  true  that  our  proper 
business  in  life  cannot  be  done  by  Conscience  alone,  but  needs 
to  be  supplemented  by  the  rule  of  Utility,  the  functions  of  the 
two  are  nevertheless  successive  and  distinct ;  the  one  supplies 
the  inner  guidance  of  Obligation,  the  other  the  outer  guidance 
of  Reason  ;  the  latter  is  needed  to  give  Duty  a  rational 
direction ;  the  former,  to  give  Eeason  a  moral  inspiration  : 
but  neither  is  entitled  to  usurp  the  language  of  the  other,  or 
to  work  what  ought  to  be  an  amicable  partnership  as  a  means 
for  plotting  mutual  ejectment. 

II.  The  Utilitarian,  however,  is  by  no  means  satisfied  with 
the  place  thus  conceded  to  his  doctrine.  He  claims  for  it  a 
competency  to  the  whole  business  of  a  moral  theory  ;  and 
declines  anj^  services  from  Conscience,  unless  he  may  himself 
have  the  credit  of  first  calling  it  into  existence  by  the  power 
of  his  favourite  principle,  the  universal  desire  of  happiness. 
Let  us,  then,  assume  that  man  has  no  other  end,  no  other 
possible  spring  of  action,  no  other  ground  of  obligation,  than 
the  attainment  of  pleasure  (including  the  avoidance  of  pain) ; 
and  consider  whether  such  a  constitution  of  his  nature  as  an 
agent,  planted  in  the  midst  of  his  rational  faculties,  is  com- 
petent to  supply  him  with  a  moral  rule,  and  to  explain  his 
moral  affections. 

1.  At  first  sight  it  would  seem  that,  if  pleasure  is  the  sole 
possible  end  of  action,  I  have  only  to  do  as  I  like,  and  the  law 
of  my  life  receives  its  fulfilment ;  and  the  very  idea  of  any 
guide  but  inclination  appears  to  vanish.  But,  to  save  us 
from  so  hasty  a  conclusion,  we  are  first  reminded  that  the 
inclination  of  the  moment  may  clash  with  interests  of  wider 
scope  ;  and  unless  I  deny  myself  to-day's  indulgence,  I  may 
only  be  preparing  to-morrow's  loss.*     True  enough,  but  this 

*  Of  Tracrav  r]hovr]v  alpovfifSa  dXX'  ecrriv  oVe  rroXkcn  i']8ovui  vnep^atvo^ev 
oTav  TrXeioj/  i]iuv  to  8v(T)(€p€S  (k  Tovrav   enrjrai.  Kal  ttoXXus  akyrjbo'ias  rjhovuiv 


Chap.  III.]   UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.  87 

merely  ^Ya^ns  us  to  do  as  we  like  in  a  discreeter  way,  and 
avoid  the  bankruptcy  of  the  spendthrift  ])y  careful  l)alancing 
of  our  accounts.  The  differences  of  human  conduct  rise  to  no 
higher  level  than  varieties  of  prudence ;  and  ^Ye  are  still  no 
nearer  to  any  conception  of  duty  or  of  authority  over  us. 

The  next  device  for  carrying  us  a  step  ir.  that  direction 
deserves  and  requires  a  fuller  notice.  We  are  told  that  plea- 
sures differ,  not  only  in  quantity,  so  as  to  be  reckoned  by  a 
calculus  of  amounts,  but  in  quality  too  ;  so  that,  apart  from 
their  magnitude,  some  are  more  desirable  than  others,  as 
being  of  a  higher  kind  ;  and  unless  we  subordinate  the  life  of 
Sense  to  that  of  the  Intellect  and  the  Affections,  we  have  not 
worked  out  the  Philosophy  of  Utility  to  its  last  refinements. 
"It  is  quite  compatible  with  the  principle  of  Utilitj',"  says 
Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  "to  recognize  the  fact  that  some  kinds  of 
pleasure  are  more  desirable  and  more  valuable  than  others. 
It  would  be  absurd  that  while,  in  estimating  all  other  things, 
quality  is  considered  as  well  as  quantity,  the  estimation  of 
pleasures  should  be  supposed  to  depend  on  quantity  alone.  If 
I  am  asked  what  I  mean  by  difference  of  quality  in  pleasures, 
or  what  makes  one  pleasure  more  valuable  than  another, 
merely  as  a  pleasure,  except  its  being  greater  in  amount,  there 
is  but  one  possible  answer.  Of  two  pleasures,  if  there  be  one 
to  which  all  or  almost  all  who  have  experience  of  both  give  a 
decided  preference  irrespective  of  any  feeling  of  moral  obliga- 
tion to  prefer  it,  that  is  the  more  desirable  pleasure.  If  one 
of  the  two  is,  by  those  who  are  competently  acquainted  with 
both,  placed  so  far  above  the  other  that  they  prefer  it,  even 
though  knowing  it  to  be  attended  with  a  greater  amount  of 
discontent,  F.nd  would  not  resign  it  for  any  quantity  of  the 
other  pleasure  which  their  nature  is  capable  of,  we  are  justified 
in  ascribing  to  the  preferred  enjoyment  a  superiority  in  quality 

KpfiTTovs  voni^ofifu,  eVfiScij/  /xei^coi/  ij/uv  r]dovf]  napaKoXovdij  ttoXvv  xP^^'^" 
vTTopulvatTL  Tus  ci\yr]86va^.  Epicurus  iu  Epist.  ad  Meuoec.  ap.  Diog.,  Laert.  x. 
129.  Totum  hoc  de  voluptate  sic  ille  (Epicurus)  prsecipit,  ut  voluptatem 
ipsam  per  so,  quia  voluptas  sit,  semper  optandam  expeteudamque  putet, 
cademque  ratioue  dolorcm  ob  id  ipsum,  qv;ia  dolor  sit,  semper  esse  fugieudum, 
itaque  hac  usurum  compensatione  sapieutem,  ut  et  voluptatem  fugiat,  si  ea 
majorem  dolorcm  cffectura  sit,  et  dolorcm  suscipiat  majorem  cfficientem 
voluptatem.     Cicero,  Tusc.  Disp.  v.  95. 


«8  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

SO  far  outweighing  quantity  as  to  render  it,  in  comparison,  of 
small  account."* 

Till  this  passage  was  written,  the  distinction  on  which  it 
insists  had  never,  I  believe,  been  regarded  as  "compatible 
with  the  principle  of  Utihty."  No  more  direct  contradiction 
can  be  exhibited  than  between  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's  statement,  that 
"  neither  jMm  nor  ijleasure  are  homogeneous,'" ■]■  and  Bentham's 
that  "  the  words  jx«';i  and  jjleaswre  are  names  of  homogeneous 
real  entities."  I  That  the  variance  is  not  accidental,  in  the 
mere  phrase,  but  lies  deep  in  the  very  conception  of  the 
doctrine  professed  by  both,  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
Bentham,  in  giving  his  complete  enumeration  of  "  the  elements 
or  dimensions  of  value  in  a  pleasure  or  pain," — an  enumeration 
on  which,  he  says,  "  the  whole  fabric  of  Morals  and  Legislation 
may  be  seen  to  rest,"  admits  no  gradation  of  kind,  but  limits 
himself  to  attributes  which  any  pleasure  may  be  liable  to 
have, — e.g.,  intensity,  duration,  certainty,  absence  of  delay, 
freedom  from  alloy,  fertility  in  ulterior  pleasure.  § 

We  equally  miss  the  distinction  between  quantity  and 
quality  in  the  writings  of  the  elder  Mill.  Where  he  distin- 
guishes the  different  "  classes  of  ends  "  which  may  move  the 
will, — sensuality,  for  example,  ambition,  avarice,  glory,  soci- 
ality, &c., — it  is  not  by  any  gradation  among  them,  but  only 
in  the  ingredients  of  their  composition  ;  and  the  pleasure  they 
carry  is  named  only  as  the  common  feature  of  them  all ; 
occurring  indeed  "  in  company,  or  connection  with  things  in 
infinite  variety,"  now  "  with  the  form  and  other  qualities  of 
a  particular  "  person;  now  "with  a  certain  arrangement  of 
colours  in  a  picture  ;  now  with  the  circumstances  of  some 
fellow-creature ;  "  "  but  these  are  the  accessories  ;  the  essence 
is  the  pleasure."!!  In  thus  discountenancing  the  language  of 
qualitative  gradation,  the  Utilitarians  of  the  last  generation 
did  but  follow  the  example  of  the  ancient  Epicureans ;  who, 
while  affirming  the  superiority  of  mental  to  bodily  pleasures 


*  utilitarianism,  pp.  11,  12. 

t  Ibid.  p.  16. 

%  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  cli.  vi.  §  vi.  note  p.  76. 

§  Ibid.  ch.  iv.  p.  49. 

II  Fragment  on  IMackintosh,  i)p.  389,  390. 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.  89 

(of  \mouv  to  })S£(T^a(),  resolved  it  into  a  difference  of  duration 
and  intensity.*  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  indeed  is  too  well  versed  in 
the  philosophical  literature  of  ancient  and  modern  times  not 
to  be  conscious  of  the  novelty  of  his  position :  "It  must  l)e 
admitted,"  he  says,  "that  Utilitarian  writers  in  general  have 
placed  the  superiority  of  mental  over  bodily  pleasures  chietiy 
in  the  greater  permanency,  safety,  uncostliness,  &c.,  of  the 
former, — that  is,  in  their  circumstantial  advantages,  rather 
tlian  in  their  intrinsic  nature.  And  on  all  these  points 
Utilitarians  have  fully  proved  their  case ;  but  they  might 
have  taken  the  other,  and,  as  it  may  be  called,  higher  ground, 
with  entire  consistency,  "-f 

If  so,  it  is  certainly  strange  that  they  withheld  their  foot 
from  ground  so  obvious ;  for,  once  stationed  there,  they  would 
have  been  saved  half  the  trouble  of  "  proving  their  case  "  at 
all.  "  The  superiority  of  mental  over  bodily  pleasures " 
speaks  for  itself,  if  there  is  a  natural  scale  on  which  we  already 
know  them  to  occupy  a  higher  place  ;  unless  it  can  be  shown, 
that,  by  an  opposite  adjustment  of  "  quantities,"  the  relation 
is  inverted.  The  older  Utilitarians  had  good  reason  for 
avoiding  this  treacherous  advantage.  They  would  look  with 
a  just  suspicion  on  this  language  of  ranks,  "  higher  and 
lower,"  "worth  more  and  worth  less," — "superior  and 
inferior,"  as  not  the  native  mode  of  hedonistic  speech,  but 
imported  into  its  vocabulary  from  some  mystic  hieratic 
tongue.  "  Higher,"  "  worth  more,"  "  superior,"  not  as  pro- 
ductive of  more  pleasure,  but  for  no  reason  at  all,  except  that 
some  presumed  expert  is  pleased  to  say  so,  surely  in.  this  we 
hear  the  voice  of  the  "  Moral- Sense-man,"  or  of  the  "  partisan 
of  the  principle   of  asceticism,"  who,   as  Bentham  remarks, 

*  BegiuuiDg  with  the  converse  case  of  pain,  the  statement  is  as  follows  : 
Tt]V  yovv  crdpKa  8ia  to  TTapoi/  fiovov  Xdixd^eiv.  rrjv  Se  yf/t'Xfjv  Koi  to  Tiaj)eK6.iv 
xaX  TO  TTapov  to  jueXXoi/.  Ovtcjs  oiiv  kol  fj^ei^ovas  i]8ovas  etVcu  ttJs  ■^vx^js- 
Epicurus  apud  Diog.  Laert.  x.  137.  Omnia  jucunda,  quamquam  seusu  cor- 
poris judicentur  ad  animv;m  referri  tamcn  ;  quocirca  corpus  gaudcre  tarn  diu, 
dum  praisentem  sentiret  voluptatem,  auimum  ct  j^rreseutem  percipere  pariter 
cum  corpore  et  prospicerc  vcnienteni  nee  prteteritam  prseterfiuere  siuere  ;  ita 
perpetuas  et  contextas  voluptates  in  sapiente  fore  semper  cum  expectatio 
speratarum  voluptatum  cum  pcrceptarum  memoria  juugeretur.  Cicero,  Tus-c. 
Disp.  V.  95,  96. 

t  Utilitarianism,  p.  11. 


go  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

has  no  better  reason  for  objecting  to  an  act  than  that  "  the 
commission  of  it  is  attended  ^Yith  a  gross  and  sensual,  or  at 
least  with  a  trifling  and  transient   satisfaction."*     What  is 
this  second  scale,  other  than  the  familiar  one  of  greater  and 
less   pleasm*e,   by  which  each  action   is   to   be   tested,  with 
possible  reversal  of  its  former  place  ?     What  attribute  is  it, 
whose  comparative  and  superlative  degrees  are  there  spread 
out,  as  predicable,  more  or  less,  of  all  our  objects  of  choice  ? 
It  is  vain  to  call  it  "  quality  "  in  the  abstract,  without  telling 
us  ichat   qualitii ;    for  comparison  there  cannot  be,  along  a 
line  of  gradation,  without   something  to  compare ;  and  if  the 
attribute  remains  anonymous,  represented  in  its  absence  only 
by  an  abstract  x,  the  comparison  is  fictitious  or  illusory.     Till 
Mr.  Mill  can  name  the  property  whose  varying   dimensions 
modify  our  estimate  of  happiness  by  mere  amount,  his  new 
criterion  remains   in   the   dark.     And  when  he  names   it,  it 
must  turn  out,  after  all,  to  be  a  quantitj^ ;  for,  to  be  suscep- 
tible  of  a  "more  or  less,"  yet  not  to   be   a  "  quantity,"  is 
plainly  impossible.     Yet,  by  the  hypothesis,  it  is  not  quantity 
of  pleasure  with  which  we  have  here  to  do  ;  that  is  provided 
for  on  the  other  and  prior  scale ;  and  whatever  else  it  may 
be, — call  it  dignity  or  nobleness  or  what  you  will, — it  consti- 
tutes and  attests  an  element  of  worth  other  than  pleasurable- 
ness ;  and  its  admission  is  an  involuntary  surrender  of  the 
theorv   which   it   is   intended    to   rescue.      In   spite   of  our 
absolute  subjection  to  our  "  two  sovereign  masters,  pleasure 
and  pain,"  there  is,  it  seems,  some  graduated  attribute,  not 
mensurable  upon  their  scale,  which  may  appeal  with  effective 
persuasion  to  our  will. 

Can  any  one  doubt  what  this  nameless  attribute — or  attri- 
bute of  many  names  (for  it  is  called  "superiority,"  "eligi- 
bility," "desirableness,"  "  preferableness ")  really  is?  I 
venture  to  affirm  that  it  is  simply  the  moral  quality  under  p, 
disguise,  holding  before  its  face  the  mask  of  pleasure,  but 
with  the  serious  eyes  of  duty  looking  through.  The  second 
scale,  of  kinds  or  quality  of  satisfaction,  is  not,  in  its  source, 
a  classification  of  pleasures  at  all,  but  just  the  natural 
hierarchy  of  our  springs  of  action,  our  own  conscious  order 
*  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  cli.  ii.  §  xviii.  note,  p.  38. 


Chap.  HI.]  UTILITARIAN SUBSTfTUTE  FOR  AUTHOR/TF.  91 

of  a  relative  rank  in  the  impulses  and  ends  of  life.  Giccn 
that  felt  hierarchy  of  claims,  and  undoubtedly  it  must  tell 
upon  our  sensitive  experience  ;  to  defy  it,  and  live  the  life  of  a 
beast  with  the  powers  of  a  man,  or  of  a  sellish  wretch  amid 
the  pleadings  of  suffering  affection,  involves  a  self-contempt 
and  humiliation  worse  than  death.  But  this  is  the  anguish 
of  a  morally  constituted  nature  ;  the  pursuing  shadow  of 
conscience  in  its  unfaithful  flight.  Take  away  that  prior 
sense  of  relative  authority ;  let  there  be  no  shame  in  self- 
surrender  to  the  appetites,  no  consciousness  of  any  call  to 
intellectual  aims  as  a  worthier  possibilit}^  no  constrainmg 
demand  of  duty  from  the  social  relations ;  let  all  these 
springs  of  activity  be  there,  but  not  inherently  distinguished 
as  better  and  worse  ;  let  them  bring  their  several  ends  before 
us,  as  candidates,  with  no  other  recommendation  than  the 
pleasurable  experiences  they  may  convey  into  an  unmoral 
nature ;  and  I  know  not  on  what  ground  we  could  longer  say, 
"It  is  better  to  be  a  human  being  dissatisfied,  than  a  pig 
satisfied ;  belter  to  be  Socrates  dissatisfied,  than  a  fool 
satisfied."*  The  one  of  these  is  " /^c^^cr  "  than  the  other, — 
the  dissatisfied  than  the  satisfied, — only  when  you  refuse  to 
try  the  ease  by  the  test  of  satisfaction, — that  is  of  pleasure. 
The  element  of  "  superiority  "  which  Mr.  Mill's  correct  feeling 
recognizes  can  never  be  designated  in  the  descriptive  dialect 
of  happiness.  Who  could  rationally  speak  of  the  superior 
happiness  of  those  who,  for  noble  ends,  or  from  honour  that 
cannot  stoop,  have  sacrificed  their  portion  of  life's  immunities 
and  enjoyments  '?  of  one,  for  instance,  who  has  gone  into 
slavery  in  order  to  redeem  another,  or  of  the  martyr  who 
cannot  lie  ? 

Suppose,  however,  these  objections  waived,  and  the  distinc- 
tion between  quantity  and  quality  admitted  as  an  adequate 
account  of  the  motives  operative  on  the  human  will.  Let 
happiness,  if  you  please,  be  computed  in  two  dimensions,  not 
degree  only,  Ijut  rank  as  well ;  yet  so  long  as  I  am  engaged 
in  selecting  and  arranging  my  own  pleasures,  and  only  taking 
care,  that,  among  the  plainer  viands,  my  table  is  dul}'  served 
with  provisions  of  a  more  delicate  cuisine,  no  moral  phenome- 

*  Utilitarianism,  p.  li. 


92  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

noil  is  reached,  and  the  mark  of  the  mere  epicure  is  on  me 
still.  Nay,  its  stamp  is  deeper  and  more  ineffaceable  than  it 
was  before  ;  for  when  the  proper  object  of  the  reason,  truth  in 
aU  its  breadth,  the  object  of  the  imagination,  beauty  in  its 
depth,  the  object  of  the  affections,  the  Hving  groups  around, 
are  set  before  me  only  as  so  many  different  varieties  of  plea- 
sure, and  I  am  drawn  to  them,  not  for  themselves,  but  to 
gratify  my  own  intellectual  taste  and  sympathetic  sensibilities, 
I  push  the  claims  of  Self  into  shameless  and  desolating  usur- 
pation ;  subordinating  to  them,  not  simply  the  lower  elements 
of  life  of  which  I  am  rightful  master,  but  those  higher  ends 
which  I  am  bound  to  serve  with  reverence.  Could  I  even 
seize  these  angels  of  the  way  and  detain  them  as  my  menials, 
they  would  only  become  incarnate,  and  lose  whatever  is  divine. 
Self-culture,  however  balanced  and  comprehensive,  not  only 
has  no  tincture  of  duty  in  it,  but  must  be  quitted  ere  a  duty 
can  be  done. 

Nor  is  there  a  more  subtle  impostor  in  the  world  than  the 
sham  self-sacrifice  which  you  make  in  the  interest  of  your 
own  perfection,  or  for  which  you  stand  ready  in  that  "  uncon- 
scious ability  to  do  without  happiness,"  which  Mr.  Mill  says 
"  gives  the  best  prospect  of  realizing  such  happiness  as  is 
attainable."*  It  may  be  true  that  "  nothing  except  that  con- 
sciousness can  raise  a  person  above  the  chances  of  life,  by 
making  him  feel,  that,  let  fate  or  fortune  do  their  worst,  they 
have  not  power  to  subdue  him  ;  which,  once  felt,  frees  him 
from  excess  of  anxiety  concerning  the  evils  of  life,  and  enables 
him,  like  many  a  stoic  in  the  worst  times  of  the  Eoman 
empire,  to  cultivate  in  tranquillity  the  sources  of  satisfaction 
accessible  to  him,  without  concerning  himself  about  the  un- 
certainty of  their  duration,  any  more  than  about  their 
inevitable  end."!  But  this  invulnerable  Stoic,  who,  under 
the  ban  of  fortune,  tranquilly  resorts  to  the  virtues  and 
humanities  as  "  accessible  sources  of  satisfaction,"  lingers 
still  at  the  propylfeum  of  the  temple  of  Duty  without  real 
worship  of  what  is  divine  within.  And  his  modern  admirers, 
who,  in  expressing  their  ideal  of  excellence,  speak  so  often  of 
"cultivating  their  sympathies,"  "cultivating  their  moral 
*  Utilitariauism,  p.  24.  t  Ibid.  p.  24. 


Chap.  Ill]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.   93 

feelings,"  "  cultivating  nobleness  of  character,"  do  but  foster 
self-homage,  even  when  sounding  the  praises  of  self-abnega- 
tion. Elevate  it  as  you  may,  we  are  called  to  something  else 
than  this.  We  are  placed  here,  not  to  remain  at  home, 
dressing  up  our  own  personality  to  the  last  spiritual  refine- 
ment, but  to  be  carried  out  and  borne  away  by  the  glories 
and  sorrows  of  the  world  ;  to  be  the  organs  of  a  truth  that 
may  bring  us  only  scorn,  of  a  love  of  right  that  may  meet  no 
response,  of  a  pity  that  sees  nothing  but  the  griefs  it  heals. 
And  from  this  service  of  ends  above  us  we  are  fatally  removed 
by  a  theor}^  which  brings  everything  to  the  ultimate  test  of 
personal  sensibility,  and  labels  it  as  a  kind  or  degree  of  plea- 
sure. The  animating  genius  of  such  a  doctrine  cannot  be 
doubtful,  and  cannot  be  changed  ;  there  is  but  one  possible 
habitant  that  can  be  owned  as  its  resident  Spirit ;  however 
dressed  up  with  the  borrowed  characteristics  of  genuine  Duty, 
still,  under  the  cloak  of  heroism,  or  behind  the  mask  of  saint- 
liness,  and  with  the  praises  of  martyrdom  upon  his  lips,  it  is 
after  all  the  figure  of  Prudence  that  looks  out  of  the  window, 
and  tries  to  personate  the  supreme  graces  of  humanity. 

2.  This,  however,  I  shall  Ije  reminded,  would  hold  only  if 
the  Utilitarian  took  for  his  rule  the  happiness  of  the  individual 
agent ;  whereas  he  includes  in  the  account  the  happiness  of 
every  one  concerned.  In  the  reckoning  between  my  own 
happiness  and  that  of  others,  he  insists  on  my  maintaining 
"  the  strict  impartiality  of  a  disinterested  and  l)enevolent 
spectator,"  and  forbids  me  in  the  least  to  favour  myself;  and 
so  appropriates  the  Christian  injunction,  "  As  ye  would  that 
men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  also  to  them  likewise."*  Now, 
it  is  perfectly  true  that  the  teachers  of  this  doctrine,  after 
grounding  it  on  each  man's  necessary  pursuit  of  his  own  plea- 
sures, and  affirming  that  this  invariable  "  end  of  human  action  " 
is  also  "  tlie  standard  of  moralitii ,'' \  do  slip  away  from  the  rule 
of  personal  happiness  which  alone  comes  legitimately  out  of 
their  reasoning,  and  announce  instead  the  criterion  of  public 
happiness.  The  fact  is  honoural^le  to  themselves,  but  fatal  to 
the  logical  structure  of  their  system.  For,  what  right  have 
they  to  demand  from  me  an  "impartial"   standing  between 

*  Utilitarianism,  p.  2i.  t  Ibid.  p.  17. 


94  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

the  pleasures  of  another  and  my  own  ?  Have  they  not  told 
me  that  I  am  by  nature  incapable  of  desirmg  anything  but 
happiness  ?  And  to  move  my  own  desire,  is  it  not  my  own 
happiness  that  they  mean  ?  How,  then,  can  they  turn  round 
and  say,  "  But,  mind,  it  is  to  make  no  difference  to  you 
whether  the  happiness  is  yours  or  somebody  else's.  It  is  the 
pleasure  of  qidlibet,  and  of  equal  value,  as  smim  or  tunm, 
abroad  or  at  home."  Surely  I  may  reply,  "Another's  happi- 
ness is  no  doubt  worth  as  much  to  him  as  mine  to  me  ;  and 
you,  who  are  outside  us  both,  may  be  neutral  between  us  :  but 
to  ask  me  to  be  indifferent  about  the  ownership,  provided 
somebody,  it  may  be  in  China  or  the  planet  Jupiter,  gets  the 
pleasure  which  I  miss,  is  to  contradict  your  own  assertion, 
that  my  only  end  is  the  gain  of  happiness." 

The  inconsistency  here  indicated  appears  in  the  strongest 
form  in  the  writings  of  Bentham ;  but  I  am  not  aware  that  it 
has  ever  been  relieved.  What  can  be  more  startling  than  to 
find  the  same  writer  who  demands  from  me  perfect  impartiality 
between  my  own  happiness  and  that  of  others, — who  insists 
that  "  everybody  is  to  count  for  one,  nobody  for  more  than 
one,"  also  giving  the  following  sketch  of  the  nature  to  which 
he  appeals,  and  of  his  business  with  it  as  a  Moralist  ? 
"  Dream  not  that  men  will  move  their  little  finger  to  serve 
you,  unless  their  advantage  in  so  doing  be  obvious  to  them. 
Men  never  did  so,  and  never  will,  while  human  nature  is  made 
of  its  present  materials."  "  But  they  will  desire  to  serve  you 
when,  by  so  doing,  they  can  serve  themselves  ;  and  the  occa- 
sions on  which  they  can  serve  themselves  by  serving  you  are 
multitudinous."*  "  To  prove  that  an  immoral  action  is  a 
miscalculation  of  self-interest,  to  show  how  erroneous  an 
estimate  the  vicious  man  makes  of  pains  and  pleasures,  is  the 
purpose  of  the  intelligent  moralist.  Unless  he  can  do  this  he 
does  nothing  ;  for,  as  has  been  stated  above,  for  a  man  not  to 
pursue  what  he  deems  likely  to  produce  to  him  the  greatest 
sum  of  enjoyment,  is  in  the  very  nature  of  things  impos- 
sible, "f 

If  his  only  possible  rule  is  "  the  greatest  sum  of  enjoyment 
to  him,"  what  is  the  use  of  giving  him  another,  that  he  must 

*  Deontology,  vol.  ii.  jd.  132.  t  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  13. 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.  95 

give  equal  weight  to  enjoyment  not  for  him  ?  And  if,  as  an 
"intelHgent  morahst,"  yon  can  ask  him  to  sacrifice  the  less 
to  the  greater  happiness  only  when  both  are  his  own,  why 
renew  the  demand  when  against  his  lighter  treasure  the  pre- 
ponderance lies  in  the  scale  of  another  life '?  In  short,  for  a 
mind  sent  into  this  world  with  one  supreme  impulse  of  self- 
love,  from  which  all  others  are  secondary  out-growths,  it  is 
impossible  to  establish  any  obligation  to  self-sacrifice,  any  call 
to  the  path  of  pain  and  the  acceptance  of  Death  to  save  a 
blessing  for  happier  survivors.  AVliat  cannot  be  X'Yud.entiallij 
established,  cannot  be  established  at  all.  Wliif  should  he 
incur  the  privation,  when  it  conflicts  with  the  only  good  at 
whose  disposal  you  place  him  ?  By  what  persuasion  are  you 
to  move  him  to  throw  away  his  all  ?  Either  you  must  tell 
him  that  the  high  consciousness  condensed  into  an  hour  of 
self-immolation  will  transcend  all  the  possibilities  he  foregoes  ; 
in  which  case  you  bid  him  consult  for  himself  under  pretence 
of  martj^rdom  for  others.  Or  else  you  must  speak  to  him  in 
quite  another  tone ;  must  remind  him  that  he  is  not  his  own,  and 
can  ask  nothing  for  himself ;  that  he  is  to  be  at  the  disposal 
of  an  authority  higher  than  he,  against  which  he  has  no 
rights  to  plead  ;  that,  when  he  knows  the  true,  wdien  he  sees 
the  just,  when  he  is  haunted  by  the  appeal  for  mercy,  a  con- 
straint which  he  cannot  question  is  put  upon  him  to  be  their 
witness,  however  long  their  dolorous  way,  however  agonizing 
their  Calvary.  And  speaking  thus,  you  altogether  change  your 
voice,  and  from  casting  up  the  account-book  of  greater  happi- 
ness are  caught  and  carried  away  into  the  hymn  of  all  the 
Prophets. 

Whence  this  evasive  oscillation  in  the  maxims  of  the 
Utilitarian  philosophy, — this  unsteady  shifting  of  the  weight 
of  obligation  from  one  leg  to  the  other, — planting  it  now  on 
the  footing  of  the  agent's  interests,  then  on  that  of  the  public 
good  ?  It  probably  has  its  origin,  not  in  any  deep-seated 
philosophical  fallacy,  but  in  a  superficial  accident  in  the 
literary  history  of  the  modern  school.  Its  first  apostle, 
Bentham,  was  a  jurist,  rather  than  a  philosopher,  eager  for 
the  banishment  of  fiction,  barbarism,  and  disorder  from  the 
intellectual  system  and  practical  procedure  of  English  law. 


96  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  1. 

At  the  substructure  of  all  well-ordered  human  life  he  laboured 
no  further  than  ^Yas  indispensable  for  his  ulterior  end ;  and 
was  content  to  assume,  or  to  treat  with  scant  analysis,  the 
few  undisputed  conceptions  in  his  work.  Instead  of  working 
out,  like  Hobbes,  an  explicit  theory  of  the  origin  of  Society, 
he  throws  the  light  and  force  of  his  thought  upon  a  later 
stage ;  and  instead  of  looking  about  to  find  out  how  the  Law- 
giver came  there,  recognizes  him  as  having  been  there  so  long 
as  already  to  have  grown  blind  to  his  proper  functions  and 
stiff  with  stereotyped  habits.  The  great  Utilitarian  never 
loses  sight  of  him,  and  keeps  him  always  at  his  side  for  pur- 
poses of  discipline  ;  boxes  his  ears  pretty  freely  ;  strips  off  his 
phylacteries,  cuts  through  fold  after  fold  of  the  texture  of 
maxims  which  impede  his  movements  ;  and  trains  him  to  a 
freer  skill  and  a  more  natural  step.  Now  it  is  to  him, — the 
Lawgiver  over  others, — and  not  to  the  subjects  themselves, 
that  Bentham  prescribes  the  rule,  "Everybody  to  count  for  one, 
and  nobody  for  more  than  one."  It  is  the  Legislator's  true 
guide.  From  his  height  above  the  field  he  is  to  look  im- 
partially on  and  insist  on  fair  play  among  the  various  candi- 
dates for  their  own  maximum  of  attainable  pleasure ;  by 
restraining  and  moderating  each,  he  is  to  maintain  the 
equilibrium  most  favourable  to  the  collective  sum.  Plainly, 
however,  this  office  of  his  implies  that  no  one  else  is  expected 
to  be  impartial,  or  to  care  except  for  himself ;  it  is  simply  to 
provide  against  the  effects  of  an  assumed  universal  self-love 
that  the  Lawgiver  is  there.  In  other  vv^ords,  Law  and  Right 
are  the  indispensable  antagonists,  instead  of  the  products  and 
exponents,  of  Self-love ;  and  have  a  rule  to  follow  quite 
opposite  to  any  which  individual  interest  can  ever  supply. 
To  reach  that  rule,  there  must  be  a  Superior  lifted  above  the 
scene,  apart  from  its  impulses,  and  wielding  Authority  over 
it ;  and  but  for  this  august  presiding  nature,  capable  of  in- 
spiring awe,  the  competing  haste  of  beings  surrendered  to 
their  own  pleasures  and  pains  would  lead  only  to  a  lawless 
carnival.  Where,  then,  and  what,  is  this  abstract  Lawgiver, 
with  whom  even  Bentham  cannot  dispense,  and  whom  he 
supplies  with  a  rule  not  valid  for  a  race  at  the  disposal  of 
their  own  visible  advantage  alone  ?     It  is  simply  Conscience 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.   97 

under  a  disguise,  the  inward  Sense,  inseparable  from  our 
nature,  of  an  orderly  authority  amongst  our  springs  of 
action  ;  or,  to  chase  it  into  the  last  retreat  of  truth,  it  is  the 
Lord  of  Conscience,  the  Legislator  of  life,  whose  revelations 
of  Eight  make  themselves  felt,  with  or  without  recognition, 
in  every  effort  to  clear  the  thought  and  purify  the  practice  of 
human  justice.  But  for  such  a  power,  it  seems  to  be  admitted 
in  the  very  assumption  of  it,  pleasure,  as  our  sole  end,  would 
send  us  all  astray.  The  Utilitarian  inconsistency  has  arisen 
from  transferring  to  the  governed  subjects  a  rule  of  im- 
partiality originally  meant  for  the  guidance  of  their  governor 
alone. 

The  Utilitarian  doctrine  has  usually  been  connected  with 
the  opinion  that  pleasure,  or  exemption  from  pain,  constitutes 
the  only  possible  end  of  action.  But  it  is  capable  of  being 
held  in  conjunction  with  a  different  view  of  the  sources  of 
volition.  There  is  nothing  in  it  to  prevent  its  disciples  from 
accepting,  as  original  in  us,  other  affections  than  the  desire  of 
happiness  for  ourselves  ;  and  it  is  natural  to  ask,  whether  the 
doctrine  gains  in  validity  by  this  psychological  change. 
Suppose,  then,  that  you  amend  your  program  of  human  nature, 
and  allow  to  it,  in  addition  to  its  fundamental  self-love,  an 
original  and  equal  love  of  others  ;  and  compute  the  effect  upon 
our  problem  of  this  new  condition.  It  certainly  gives  a  good 
account  of  tlie  facts  that  personal  interest  frequently  gives 
way  to  social ;  that  the  happiness  of  neighbours  becomes  an 
essential  element  in  our  own  ;  that  therefore  there  is  an  ap- 
proximate coincidence,  in  their  practical  working,  between  the 
rules  of  Prudence  and  those  of  Benevolence,  and  that  where 
they  conflict,  the  disinterested  impulse  has  as  fair  a  chance  of 
ascendency  as  the  selfish.  Of  the  two  affections  at  the  dis- 
posal of  which  human  life  is  placed,  now  one,  and  now  the 
other,  will  be  driven  from  the  field,  and  the  movement  will 
sway  and  oscillate  between  the  extremes  of  egoism  and 
generosity.  And  so,  if  instead  of  two  primitive  forces  of  affec- 
tion we  admit  ton,  we  should  furnish  the  conditions  of  a 
corresponding  variety  of  result.  Turn  ever  so  many  impulses 
into  the  mind  to  have  their  play  there,  and  it  is  certain  that 
each  will,  some  time  or  other,  lead  the  game.     But  in  such 


98  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

acts  there  is  absolutely  no  moral  phenomenon  at  all.  They 
are  actually,  though  partially,  presented  in  the  irresponsible 
ereatures  below  us  ;  in  whose  nature  several  instinctive  affec- 
tions are  co-present  on  terms  of  equality,  taking  them  by  turns 
in  each  direction  embraced  within  the  compass  of  their  being. 
The  question  to  which  we  require  an  answer  is  not,  AVliy  self- 
love  often  does  give  way,  but  how,  under  certain  conditions, 
all  men  know  that  it  ought  to  give  way.  And  this  sense  of 
Duty, — this  consciousness  of  an  obligatory  order,  this  moral 
right  of  one  incentive  over  another,  is  something  totally  dis- 
tinct from  the  existence  of  the  affections  themselves  and  their 
assemblage  on  the  arena  of  the  same  consciousness.  If  we 
are  fitted  up  only  with  personal  interests  and  various  loves, 
without  the  revelation  of  any  natural  ranks  of  authority  among 
them,  there  is  no  rational  ground  for  the  characteristic  ex- 
periences of  the  Conscience ;  for  that  flush  and  glory  of 
approval  with  which  we  look  upon  a  victory  of  Eight ;  for  the 
shame  of  forgotten  vows,  and  the  remorse  of  irrevocable  guilt ; 
and  for  that  pathetic  play  betw^een  the  shadows  of  sin  and  the 
conquering  lights  of  a  divine  trust,  which  fills  the  whole 
atmosphere  of  Christendom  with  the  gleams  and  glooms  of  a 
stormy  day. 

The  assumption,  then,  of  an  original  social  as  well  as  self- 
regarding  tendency  does  not  convert  the  Utilitarian  doctrine 
into  an  adequate  theory  of  duty.  Yet  another  alteration  must 
be  made  in  its  draft  of  human  nature,  before  its  ethical  and 
its  psychological  aspects  are  brought  into  harmony.  If  we 
were  naturally  endowed,  not  only  with  sympathy  for  others, 
but  pJso  with  a  knowledge  that  we  were  hound  to  consult  for 
their  happiness  as  for  our  own,  then  indeed  we  should  Ije  made 
upon  the  right  pattern  for  the  Utilitarian  philosophy,  and  its 
method  would  work  without  a  check  from  any  part  of  human 
life.  Such  an  account  of  the  factors  of  our  moral  being,  re- 
ducing them  to  self-regard,  sympathy,  and  obligation,  though 
too  complex  for  the  school  which  would  gain  by  it,  would 
indeed,  as  I  believe,  be  an  utterly  illusory  simplification ; 
omitting  or  distorting  the  greater  part  of  the  incentives  which 
urge  the  will  and  constitute  the  character.  But  it  would  at 
least  lay  the  real  foundation  for  duty ;  and  the  remaining  con- 


Chap.  III.]  UTILITARIAN  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  AUTHORITY.  99 

ti'Gversy  \YOiild  lie  \Yholly  in  the  field  of  mental  history  and 
analysis. 

That  sometliifu/  must  be  conceded  to  the  intuitive  doctrine, 
and  that  the  faV)i'ication  of  the  mature  perceptions,  intellectual 
and  moral,  from  the  elements  of  early  sensation,  has  not 
proved  a  very  manageable  problem,  seems  now  to  be  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  confessed.  For  no  otherwise  can 
we  explain  the  eagerness  with  which  the  experience-philoso- 
phers have  seized  upon  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  suggestion  that 
our  seeming  axioms  are  not  personal  acquisitions,  but  an  in- 
heritance transmitted  from  the  habits  of  our  forefathers,  and 
formed  in  them  by  an  incalculably  slow  accumulation  cf 
personal  experiments.  If  the  so-called  intuitions  had  already 
been  satisfactorily  resolved,  if  their  analysis  was  as  exhaustive 
as  it  professed  to  be,  if  there  was  no  residuary  function  in 
them  which,  however  often  dissipated,  insisted  on  coming 
back,  there  would  have  been  no  room  for  a  new  explanation  ; 
and  a  theory  which  overleaped  the  boundaries  of  the  indi- 
vidual life,  and  flung  itself  upon  the  illimitable  resources  of 
antecedent  generations,  would  have  been  resented  as  a  reflec- 
tion upon  the  adequacy  of  prior  expositions  designed  to  be 
complete.  Instead  of  this,  Mr.  Spencer's  ingenious  and  fruit- 
ful hint  has  been  welcomed  with  a  zest  which  shows  how  much 
his  help  was  needed.  To  estimate  the  amount  of  its  evidence, 
and  the  range  of  its  value,  as  it  is  beyond  my  competency,  is 
happily  not  within  the  scope  of  m}^  design.  For  one  remark 
only  do  the  exigencies  of  my  subject  seem  to  call.  The  doc- 
trine of  cumulation  Ijy  inheritance  can  never  help  us  to  any 
genesis  of  moral  faculty  out  of  data  that  are  unmoral.  The 
transmission  of  improving  aptitudes  may  render  rapid  and 
eas}',  processes  which  were  slow  and  difficult ;  rich  and  intense, 
feelings  that  were  poor  and  faint ;  immediate,  perceptions  that 
were  mediate  ;  abstract,  cognitions  that  were  concrete.  But 
it  cannot  give  what  it  does  not  contain  ;  no  induction,  how- 
ever wide  and  long,  can  yield  us  predicates  never  found  in  its 
particulars  ;  and  from  an  experience,  l)e  it  of  one  generation 
or  of  a  million,  into  which  at  one  end  only  the  sentient  ele- 
ment enters,  at  the  other  nothing  that  is  moral  will  come 
out.     To  deduce  the  authority  of  Duty,  and  the  disclosures  of 

H  2 


loo  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

Conscience,  from  "  consolidated  experiences  of  utilit}',"  is  to 
violate  the  ancient  rule,  Ovk  tariv  it,  liWov  yu'ovg  imTaBdvra 
deit,ui ;  *  and  to  assign  a  cause  which,  when  relinquished  as 
inadequate  in  the  individual  life,  cannot  be  shown  to  gain  by 
extension  any  better  relation  to  the  effect. 

The  facts,  then,  of  our  Moral  nature  retain,  as  it  appears  to 
me,  the  character  and  significance  ascribed  to  them  in  the 
previous  expositions.  In  order  to  give  them  another  aspect,, 
the  philosophy  of  Utility  has  to  explain  them  away  into  some- 
thing else  from  which  their  essence  has  departed ;  treats  their 
central  thought  as  an  illusion,  whilst  still  appealing  to  it  as  a 
power ;  and  raises  their  external  function  into  an  authorita- 
tive importance  to  the  claims  of  which  the  Conscience  never 
will  respond.  It  fails  to  take  possession  of  Morals  at  their 
source,  not  less  than  the  Intuitive  doctrine  to  conduct  them 
to  their  application  ;  and  will  never  occupy  its  true  place,  till 
it  is  content  to  take  up  the  Will  already  right  in  Duty,  and 
guide  it  to  an  issue  equally  right  in  Reason. 

*  Aristot.  Aual.  Post.  75.  a.  38. 


lOI 


CHAP  TEE     lY. 

GOD    IN    HISTORY. 

All  that  has  happened  among  mankmd  has  arisen  from 
the  mutual  play  of  the  forces  aromid  them  and  the  forces 
within  them.  The  drama  of  ages  has  had  this  ^Y0^1d  for  its 
stage,  and  our  race  for  its  actors,  and  could  not  have  remained 
the  same,  had  either  been  different.  Suppose,  for  instance,  the 
distribution  of  sea  and  land  other  than  it  has  been  within 
attested  time,  giving  a  new  massing  to  the  ice,  and  new 
currents  to  the  ocean  ;  or  change  the  lines  on  which  the 
mountain-ranges  rise,  so  that  the  great  rivers,  whose  reeds 
hide  the  cradle  of  all  civilization,  shall  have  a  different  flow  ; 
bury  the  old  forests  a  little  deeper  ;  put  the  mineral  veins  out 
of  reach  ;  or  take  the  cotton  and  the  flax  from  the  flora  of 
the  earth  :  and,  by  this  modification  of  terrestrial  conditions, 
you  turn  back  all  our  actual  past  into  the  impossible.  And 
in  the  same  way,  had  man  been  constituted  otherwise  than  a-s 
he  is  ;  had  his  appetites  been  less  exigent,  or  his  resentment 
less  keen,  or  his  afi'ections  less  capable  of  ideal  direction,  or 
his  faculty  of  speech  no  greater  than  a  dog's, — then,  also,  an 
observer  of  the  world  must  have  witnessed  quite  another 
change  of  scenes.  Nay,  there  are  crises  in  human  aflairs  at 
which  the  whole  movement  of  the  future  seems  to  hinge  on  a 
single  act  of  a  single  agent.  Had  Judas  Iscariot  spurned  at 
first,  mstead  of  returning  at  last,  the  thirty  pieces  of  silver, 
who  can  measure  the  change  from  that  dropped  link  in  the 
sequence  of  events?  Had  Mohammed  broken  the  cobweb 
which  was  flung  across  his  cave  of  concealment,  and  which 
seemed  to  toll  his  pursuers  he  was  not  there,  the  vehement 
life  which  Islam  has  breathed  into  so  many  nations  would 
have  been  lost  to  the  pulses  of  the  world.  Had  the  monastery 
at  Erfurt  deputed  another  than  young  Luther  on  its  errand 
to  paganized  Rome,  or  had  Leo  X.   sent   a  less  scandalous 


I02  AUTHORITY   IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

agent  than  Tetzel  on  his  business  to  German}',  the  seeds  of 
the  Eeformation  might  have  fallen  by  the  wayside,  where 
they  had  no  deepness  of  earth,  and  the  Western  revolt  of  the 
human  mind  have  taken  another  date  and  another  form. 
And  so  it  would  seem  as  if  the  many-coloured  web  of  history 
were  all  woven  by  the  threads  of  our  volition,  shot  through 
the  continuous  warp  of  natural  law  without  us. 

Is  there,  then,  it  will  be  asked,  no  part  left  free  for  a  Divine 
Agent?  Is  the  story  all  told,  when  the  scene  has  been 
physically  described,  and  the  actors  have  revealed  their 
purposes,  and  played  out  their  game '?  Or  is  there  a  deeper 
plot,  which  wields  their  conscious  aims,  and  combines  them 
foi-  unconscious  ends,  and  works  out  a  catastrophe  dissipating 
and  transcending  all  personal  dreams  ?  How  far  there  is 
scope  for  a  divine  education  of  mankind,  without  disturl)ing 
either  factor  of  their  history,  and  on  what  lines  of  change  we 
are  to  seek  its  vestiges,  will  be  evident  by  simply  following 
out  the  principles  which  we  have  already  gained. 

If,  indeed,  the  only  way  in  which  God  could  find  entrance 
among  the  phenomena  were  as  a  third  factor,  over  and  above 
the  theatre  of  nature,  and  the  life  of  man  ;  if  the  question 
were,  whether,  when  these  two  had  done  their  utmost,  there 
yet  remained  some  unexplained  effects  for  which  he  must  be 
invoked, — we  might  well  despair  of  finding  room  for  any 
causality  of  his ;  for  it  is  obvious  that  the  other  two  groups — 
the  agency  without,  and  the  agency  within — constitute  a  pair 
logically  exhaustive,  and  absolutely  close  their  ranks  against  any 
new  partner  on  the  field.  Those  who  insist  that  nature  and 
humanity  suffice  to  account  for  everything,  and  need  no  tertnim 
quid  to  complete  the  tale,  tell  us  not  simply  a  truth,  but  a 
truism,  serviceable  only  as  betraying  their  total  misconception  of 
the  problem.  Their  tacit  assumptions,  that  nature  is  a  reservoir 
of  atheistic  powers,  and  that  man  is  an  insulated  personality, 
— the  product  and  reagent  of  those  powers, — and  that,  till 
we  discover  some  other  realm,  we  may  deny  all  other  mind 
than  his,  are  simply  a  prejudgment  of  the  question  by  false 
definition  and  inaccurate  division.  There  is  no  need  of  any 
outlying  domain,  beyond  the  scope  of  the  phenomena  we  see 
and  feel,  to  serve  for  us  as  the  receptacle  of  God.     Infinitely 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD  IN  HISTORY.  103 

as  his  being  may  transcend  the  whole  sphere  of  our  cognition, 
it  is  not  beyond  nature,  but  within  it,  that  we  must  find  the 
action  of  his  power :  it  is  not  beyond  the  human  mind,  but 
within  it,  that  we  must  be  conscious  of  his  hving  spirit.  "We 
shall  have,  therefore,  to  break  up  the  two  factors  of  history 
in  order  to  draw  forth  from  them,  and  exhibit  apart,  such 
elements  in  them  as  may  be  divine. 

This  world,  which  is  the  outward  theatre  of  history,  is  part 
of  the  great  cosmos,  all  whose  forces,  as  we  have  seen,  find 
their  unity  in  God,  and  whose  laws  are  but  the  modes  and 
order  of  his  thought.  In  that  field,  he  is  not  simply  First 
Cause,  but  Sule  Cause ;  all  force  being  one,  and  no  force  other 
than  his.  "Whenever,  in  accommodation  to  the  vocabulary  of 
science,  we  speak  of  a  plurality  of  powers,  we  refer  in  realit}- 
only  to  several  distinct  orders  of  phenomena  which  are 
wrought  out  by  the  universal  power,  and  which,  by  their 
different  aspects,  cover  its  identity  with  varialjle  masks. 
Though  this  disguise  is  often  used  as  a  philosophic  trap,  and 
the  laws  of  things  are  tricked  out  in  the  drapery  of  causality, 
it  can  impose  on  no  one  who  follows  the  meanings  of  his 
words  to  their  ultimate  seats,  and  knows  thought  from  thought 
under  every  dress.  Thus  the  first  factor,  nature,  falls  back 
entirely  to  the  account  of  the  highest  Will.  And  to  this  term, 
we  must  remember,  belongs  man  himself,  so  far  as  he  is 
simply  a  living  thing, — a  mammal  in  the  museum  of  nature. 
He,  too,  is  subject,  like  the  clouds  and  trees  and  waves,  to 
rules  in  which  he  has  no  voice  :  and  within  these  limits  he 
is  merely  a  natural  object,  the  seat  of  natural  phenomena  ; 
and  the  Divine  Cause  is  operative  in  him  in  the  same  purely 
dynamic  way  in  which  he  grows  the  forests,  and  moulds  the 
hail.  So  far,  therefore,  as  the  birthday  of  our  race  upon  tliis 
earth,  the  distribution  and  movement  of  population,  the  genius 
and  haljits  of  nations,  the  shifting  centres  of  power,  have 
been  determined  l)y  the  natural  constitution  of  the  globe 
itself,  they  fall  directly  under  divine  causation,  and  are 
included  in  the  organism  of  the  divine  scheme.  By  referring 
these  things  to  the  soil  and  the  sun,  to  the  fruits  and  hunting- 
grounds,  to  the  wood  and  metals,  of  the  world,  we  do  not  take 
them  out  of  the   Supreme  Hand,  but,  on  the  contrary,  leave 


ro4  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

them  unconditionally  there;  for,  though  the  Creator  goes 
Ijeyond  nature,  nature  lies  and  lives  entirely  in  him.  This 
Xilujskal  agency  of  God,  spreading  alike  through  persons  and 
things,  through  organic  and  inorganic  being,  can  take  no 
separate  notice  of  human  life  and  character,  nor  of  the  differ- 
ences which  distinguish  us  from  each  other  in  our  lot  and  in 
our  mind;  but  pledges  itself  to  steadiness  and  consistency 
throughout  a  whole  cosmical  system,  to  the  balanced  good  of 
which  it  is  directed.  So  severe  does  this  unbending  uniformity 
sometimes  appear,  that  it  wrings  from  us  passionate  depreca- 
tions of  pity  and  alarm  ;  as  w-hen  some  rude  force  crushes,  or 
some  unearned  malady  tortures  and  prostrates,  a  noble  and 
lovely  life,  the  centre  of  a  thousand  hopes.  But  we  must  not 
be  tempted  to  demand  that  the  ivhole  of  Omnipotence  should 
stand  at  the  disposal  of  human  ends.  We  must  beware  of 
saying  that  the  physical  conditions  which  influence  the  course 
of  humanity  are  meant  for  these  alone,  and  should  be 
measured  by  the  standard  of  our  needs.  They  are  only  a 
local  application  to  one  planet  (which,  moreover,  has  other 
inhabitants  besides  ourselves)  of  laws  embracing  other  worlds, 
and  affecting,  it  may  be,  innumerable  other  things  ;  and  all 
that  we  can  ask  is,  that,  in  their  universal  sweep,  their 
operation  here  should  have  its  estimated  place.  To  us,  side 
by  side  with  the  moral  government  of  God,  which  goes  by  the 
characters  of  men,  there  must  ever  appear  to  be  a  yet  vaster 
administration,  which,  still  intellectual,  is  »/?moral,  and 
carries  its  inexorable  order  through,  and  never  turns  aside, 
though  it  crushes  life  and  hope,  and  even  gives  occasion  to 
guilt  and  abasement.  Probably  enough,  this  is  only  an 
illusion  of  ours ;  and,  could  we  follow  from  world  to  world 
those  laws  which  look  so  sad  and  stern  below,  we  might  find 
them  working  out  elsewhere  the  spiritual  ends  which  here 
they  seem  to  disappoint ;  and  might  discover  that  the  training 
of  minds  into  the  likeness  of  himself  is  not  only  supreme,  but 
sole,  among  the  designs  of  God.  But,  so  long  as  we  are  con- 
fined to  our  provincial  position  in  this  universe,  and  can  see 
no  moral  ends  beyond  the  limits  of  mankind,  there  will  remain 
outside  these  limits  a  simply  natural  divine  order,  which,  so 
far  as  it  educates  us,  does  so  only  in  passing  on  to  other  ends. 


Chap,  IV.]  GOD   IN  HISTORY.  105 

But,  as  "we  have  seen,  God  is  not  only  in  nature,  which 
spreads  the  scene  of  history,  and  in  mankind,  as  natural 
objects  belonging  to  the  furniture  of  that  scene  ;  he  is  also  in 
those  higher  endowments  of  our  humanity  which  transcend 
the  zoologic  limits,  and  enable  us  to  become  the  actors  in 
history,  and  to  perform  the  parts.  He  has  not  only  planted 
within  us  the  train  of  passions  and  affections  which  carry  us 
hither  and  thither  as  they  take  their  turn  at  the  helm,  but 
has  disposed  them  in  a  hierarchy  of  ranks,  and  by  his  own 
Living  Spirit  in  the  midst  interpreted  their  relative  authority, 
and  made  it  felt.  So  that  over  us,  as  moral  beings,  are  set 
other  laws  than  those  which  are  embodied  in  our  animal 
organism,  and  in  virtue  of  which  we  eat  and  drink,  and  sleep 
and  wake,  and  laugh  and  weep,  and  fear  and  fight,  and  herd 
together  in  gregarious  masses ;  viz.,  laws  to  which  our  assent 
is  asked,  and  to  which  we  render,  if  at  all,  an  elective  obedi- 
ence. We  are  committed  to  the  disposal  of  no  imperious  and 
overmastering  spontaneity  of  force,  but  of  a  clear  conscious- 
ness of  relative  worth  among  the  claims  that  bid  for  us ;  and 
this  revelation  of  authority,  this  knowledge  of  the  better,  this 
inward  conscience,  this  moral  ideality, — call  it  what  you  will, 
— is  the  presence  of  God  in  man.  Twice  over,  therefore,  does 
his  life  meet  with  ours, — his  physical  agency  in  the  forces 
which  he  lends  to  our  organic  nature  ;  his  spiritual,  in  the 
apprehension  which  he  gives  us  of  the  gradations  of  character 
and  the  supremacy  of  duty. 

Do  we  thus  admit  into  our  l)eing  too  much  that  is  divine  ? 
Within  so  narrow  an  enclosure,  must  we  fear  that  it  will 
demand  the  whole  space,  and  leave  nothing  for  ourselves '? 
It  is  a  groundless  fear.  Far  from  encroaching  on  our  proper 
personality,  the  second  or  spiritual  divine  element  addresses 
itself  to  minds  alone,  and  presupposes  the  co-presence  with  it 
of  our  will  as  a  resj^onsible  subject  and  an  effective  power. 
Without'  this,  it  would  have  no  function  in  us  any  more  than 
in  a  sheep ;  to  this  only  can  it  address  its  appeal,  and  offer 
free  suggestion  for  free  adoption.  Its  voice  is  not  less  strictly 
relative  to  the  problems  of  character  in  us,  than  it  is  distinctly 
expressive  of  character  in  God.  There  cannot  l)e  one  to 
command,  unless,  also,  there  is  one  to  obey.     Three  orders  of 


lo6  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

power,  therefore,  meet  within  the  human  being, — a  ph3^sical, 
a  spiritual,  and  a  personal ;  the  first  conditioning  his  life  as 
a  creature  or  living  thing,  the  other  two  as  a  moral  nature ; 
the  former  divinely  presenting,  the  latter  humanly  answering, 
the  responsible  appeal. 

This  personal  will,  which  is  thus  saved  as  the  third  con- 
stituent power  in  our  nature,  may  concur,  or  may  conflict, 
with  either  of  the  other  two.     It  may  resist,  or  strive  to  evade, 
the  dynamic  order  of  the  world ;  as  when  we  vainly  defy  the 
physical  laws  of  health,  or  attempt  enterprises  with  resources 
inadequate  to  their  success.     In  all  such  cases  of  frustrated 
aim, — when,  for  instance,   we  are  detained  by  storms  from 
reaching  the  death-bed  of  a  friend  across  the  sea, — it  is  we 
in  our  personal  life  that  are  baffled  by  the  divine  order  of  the 
world.     Our  will,  again,  may  resist,  or  it  may  adopt,  the  im- 
perative intimations  of  conscience  ;  either  betraying  the  right 
to  save  a  life  of  tainted  ease,  or  meeting  self-sacrifice,  rather 
than  incur  the  sin  of  unfaithfulness.     And  here  the  casting 
vote  is  ours  ;  and,   if  the  wrong  is  done,   it   is   the   divine 
agenc}',  in  its  spiritual  function,  that  is  "grieved"  and  driven 
away.     In  this  way   are   clearly   distinguished   the   relative 
parts  which  the  two  agents,  the  divine  and  the  human,  play 
in  the  respective  spheres  of  necessary  law  and  of  moral  law. 
As  in  the  former,  in  the  outward  field  of  nature,  we  often  say 
that  "  Man  proposes,  but  God  disposes,"  so  in  the  latter,  in 
the  inner  sphere  of  conscience,  we  may  reverse  the  rule,  and 
say  that  "  God  proposes,  but  man  disposes."     God's  part  is 
done,  when,  having  made  us  free,  he  shows  to  us  our  best : 
ours  now  remains  to  pass  on  from  illumination  of  the  con- 
science to  surrender  of  the  will.     And  thus  we  obtain  at  once 
the  separating  line  between  the  divine  and  the  human  in  that 
moral  and  spiritual  life  which  involves  the  communion  of  both  : 
the  initiative  of  all  higher  good  is  with  God ;  while  it  rests 
with  man  to  be  the  organ  of  its  realization,  or  its  loss.     If,  as 
there  dawn  upon  us  purer  lights,  be  it  of  truth  or  of  duty, 
which  promise  to  dissipate  the  lazy  mists  that  fold  us  round, 
we  refuse  to  lay  ourselves  open  to  them,  and  to  take  the  path 
illumined  by  them  alone  ;  if,  still  worse,  we  try  to  appropriate 
their  glory  without  accepting  their  ol)ligations,  and  thus  turn 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD  IN  HISTORY.  laj 

them  into  richer  ornaments  of  self, — we  do  all  that  we  can  to 
be  "  without  God  in  the  world,"  and  to  reduce  whatever  is 
divine  into  the  mere  food  of  appetite  or  convenience.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  freely  give  ourselves  away  to  the  true,  the 
beautiful,  the  right,  and  reverence  them  as  above  us,  and  en- 
titled to  the  sacrifice,  then,  whether  we  know  it  or  not,  we 
place  ourselves  at  God's  disposal,  and  become  fellow-workers 
with  him.  Hence,  all  dijing  out  of  moral  good  is  a  human 
phenomenon,  due  to  some  canker  of  unfaithfulness ;  while  all 
the  new  births  of  good  are  divine  in  their  source,  though 
human,  also,  in  their  accomplishment. 

It  is  a  true  saving,  however  hard  to  a  stoic's  self-reliance, 
that  it  is  l)eyond  the  power  of  man  to  lift  himself :  he  can 
only  prevent  himself  from  sinking.  It  is  not  ivc  that  set  the 
lights  before  us  at  which  we  aim  :  they  gleam  upon  us  from 
beyond  us,  if  not  by  the  immediate  gift  of  God  ;  and  our  part 
is  complete  if  we  keep  our  eye  intent  to  see  them,  and  our 
foot  resolute  to  climb  whither  they  show  us  the  way.  The 
beacon  aloft  is  given ;  the  path  to  reach  it  alone  is  found. 
But  there  is  another  saying,  not  less  true,  needful  to  complete 
the  story, — that  whoever  is  faithful  to  a  first  grace  that  opens 
on  him  shall  have  a  second  in  advance  of  it ;  and,  if  still  he 
follows  the  messenger  of  God,  angels  ever  brighter  shall  go 
before  his  way.  Every  duty  done  leaves  the  eye  more  clear, 
and  enables  gentler  whispers  to  reach  the  ear  ;  every  brave 
sacrifice  incurred  lightens  the  weight  of  the  clinging  self 
which  holds  us  liack ;  every  storm  of  passion  swept  away 
leaves  the  air  of  the  mind  transparent  for  more  distant 
visions  :  and  thus,  by  a  happy  concord  of  spiritual  attractions, 
the  helping  graces  of  Heaven  descend,  and  meet  the  soul 
intent  to  rise.  Though,  therefore,  it  is  not  ours  to  elevate 
ourselves,  we  shall  assuredly  be  sent  for,  if  we  will  only  go. 
But,  then,  this  growing  scale,  this  more  and  ever  more  of 
opportunity,  must  be  referred  to  God  ;  and  it  gives  us  a  mark 
by  which  we  may  track  the  lines  of  Providence  in  life. 

It  is  from  personal  self-reflection  that  we  learn  this  consti- 
tution of  our  nature,  and  find  in  it  the  boundary  between  the 
human  and  the  divine.  But  its  discovery  would  be  impossible, 
and  its  effects  reduced  to  zero,  in  an  insulated  life ;  as  it  is 


■  loS  A  UTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

only  in  the  presence  of  other  minds  similarly  formed  and 
affected,  only  in  the  visible  play  of  passion  and  character 
around,  under  the  ajipeal  of  the  nobler  and  the  shock  of  the 
baser,  that  the  moral  capacities  can  find  development  so  as 
adequately  to  he :  so,  even  if  regarded  as  potentially  there, 
they  could  not  he  known  to  us,  but  for  the  objective  image  of 
our  own  inner  history  in  the  living  drama  around  us.  The 
reciprocal  action  of  a  common  nature  in  each  and  all  not  only 
multiplies,  but  absolutely  conditions,  its  manifestation  in  any  ; 
and  the  divine  relation  to  the  conscience,  being  social  not  less 
than  individual,  may  be  followed  out  in  the  character  of 
nations  over  the  surface  of  the  world,  and  will  give  traces 
everywhere  of  a  common  moral  government.  These  traces 
will  be  found  a  homogeneous  extension  of  individual  experience. 
Humanity,  however,  is  not  only  a  many-lived  organ ;  it  is 
also  a  hmg-Uved  organ  of  God  :  and  its  phenomena,  besides 
enlarging  themselves  from  the  personal  scale  to  that  of 
collective  society,  acquire  a  certain  cumulative  power  and 
volume  from  generation  to  generation,  yielding  results,  which, 
"being  beyond  the  intentions  of  all  the  human  agents  in  their 
l^roduction,  must  be  referred  to  the  divine  administration  of 
the  earth.  The  aims  of  man,  taken  one  by  one,  and  then 
added  up  into  a  whole,  are  no  adequate  measure  of  the  effects 
achieved  by  them  as  tenants  of  the  globe  ;  and  its  surface  is 
rich  in  memorials  which  have  been  left  as  a  heritage  for  the 
race,  but  would  astonish  no  one  more  than  the  private  agents 
in  their  creation.  Who  can  think,  without  wonder,  of  the 
operation,  in  the  long  run,  of  a  very  simple  and  inconspicuous 
cause  ;  viz.,  man's  need  of  fresh  water  to  relieve  his  periodic 
thirst  ?  This  it  is  which  has  led  him  to  the  banks  of  rivers 
for  his  first  settlements  ;  which  has  selected  the  site  of  mighty 
cities,  and  woven  the  network  of  the  early  civilizations  ;  which 
has  loaded  the  margins  of  the  Nile,  the  Tigris,  the  Euphrates, 
and  the  Ganges  with  monuments  of  ancient  art  and  more 
ancient  piety  ;  and,  in  short,  traced  the  whole  contour  of  his- 
torical geography,  "\^'^len  men  saw  the  marvellous  product, 
and,  under  the  shadow  of  palaces  and  temples,  speculated  on 
the  origin  of  so  proud  a  scene,  it  is  not  surprising  if  they 
fancied  that  it  must  have  been  fore-announced  by  the  fates. 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD   IN  HISTORY.  109 

and  that  the  founders,  well  knowing  what  was  given  them  to 
do,  were  all  heroes  and  divine.     But  the  naked  Britons,  who, 
before  Caesar's   time,   were   encamped  on   the  brink  of   the 
Thames,  were  placed  there  by  the  rudest  exigencies  of  barbarian 
nature,  without  foresight  of  the  modern  London  ;  and  just  as 
little  was  it  any  historic  vision  of  the   "  Eternal  City  "  that 
floated  before  the  mind   of  Eomulus  and   his  band.     Each 
increment  on  these  small  beginnings  has  been  similarly  made 
by  the  working   of  petty  and    temporary  aims,  j-et  with  an 
aggregate  result  as  much  grander  than  its  rudiments  as  the 
history  of  human   society  transcends  the  pettiness  of  retail 
trade.     Nor    is    it  only  the  material    capital   of   civilization 
which  thus  outstrips  the  conception  of  its  several  contributors. 
The  whole  structure  of  human  law — that  august  expression  of 
the  moral  organization  of  our  collective  life — has  its  ground 
in  the  simplest  of  psychological  facts  ;  viz.,  the  inequality  of 
the  resentment,  in  case  of  wrong,  felt  by  the  injured  and  by  the 
bystanders  ;  inducing  the  latter,  who  cannot  be  worked  up  to 
the  rage  of  the  former,  to  interpose,  and  enforce  their  own  more 
mitigated  anger.     But  how  little  could  they  who  first  rushed 
in  to  stay  the  uplifted  arm  of  vengeance  dream  of  the  Pandects, 
whose  initial  word  they  wrote,  or  imagine  that  mighty  system 
of  rights  and  obligations,  of  restraints  and  sanctions,  of  mutual 
service  required  and  common  protection   guaranteed,  which, 
expressing  the  formed  and  educating  the  unformed  conscience 
of  communities,  secures  their  moral  tissue  b}'  fibres  ever  firm 
and  ever  growing  !     The  New-Zealander,  who,  when  l)rought  to 
London,  wondered  how,  without  tiocks  and  herds  in  sight,  or 
fields  loaded  with  the  fruits  of  tillage,  the  swarming  city  was 
fed   day  by  day,  yielded   to  a  just   surprise ;    the  countless 
springs  of  private  interest  which  easily  effect  so  gigantic  a 
result  being  inconspicuous,   and  unconsciously  adjusting  an 
equilibrium  never  before  the  agents'  thought.     But  far  more 
marvellous  is  the  peaceful  co-presence  and  orderly  co-operation 
of  millions  of  human    beings,    each  charged  with  forces   of 
passion  and  desire  distinct  from  the  rest  and  unheeding,  for 
the  most  part,   the  unity  of  the  whole.     This  new  order  of 
phenomena,  beyond  the  range  of  our  personal  aim,  sets  us  on 
the  vestiges  of  God  in  historv ;    and,  by  following  out  the 


no  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

individual  moral  constitution  into  its  social  manifestations,  we 
shall  trace  an  intelligible  line  between  the  divine  and  human 
agency  in  the  vicissitudes  of  the  world. 

Let  it  be  observed  that  the  partnership  which  we  have  here 
to  define  subsists  entirely  between  the  j^ersonal  and  the  spiritual 
constituents  already  discriminated  ;  and  that  with  the  physical 
agency,  which  God  shares  with  none,  our  problem  has  no  con- 
cern. As  man  has  no  part  in  it,  except  to  be  more  or  less 
subject  to  it,  it  cannot  enter  into  any  estimate  of  his  claims. 
I  do  not  forget,  in  striking  out  this  element,  that,  according 
to  the  disciples  of  Mr.  Buckle,  I  fling  everything  away,  and 
leave  only  the  effects  and  products  of  what  I  have  cancelled. 
In  his  view,  individual  and  personal  forces,  even  when  set  up 
and  consolidated,  are  as  nothing  in  presence  of  the  great 
system  of  natural  law  which  builds  about  them  the  conditions 
of  their  action ;  and  are  themselves,  at  one  remove,  the  off- 
spring of  that  system.  That  "  one  remove,"  however,  would 
carry  us  at  a  stride  into  the  darkness  which  surrounds  the 
origin  of  man,  and  hides  his  cradle  in  the  reeds  of  unknown 
rivers,  or  the  caves  of  nameless  shores  :  and  whether  the  germ 
of  a  new  living  form  that  lay  there  had  every  fibre  still  woven 
into  the  tissue  of  nature,  and,  if  so,  at  what  later  epoch  an 
untransmitted  power  was  lent  to  its  heirs  to  be  their  own,  are 
questions  of  prehistoric  speculation,  on  which  it  is  irrelevant 
to  pronounce.  It  is  sufficient,  that,  within  the  limits  of 
history,  man  has  been  agent  as  well  as  patient,  and,  however 
restrained  by  the  conditions  of  the  scene  in  which  he  stands, 
has  himself  variously  modified  its  possibilities,  and  asserted 
his  own  causality  against  a  thousand  pressures  of  both 
material  and  moral  resistance.  That  by  variations  in  climate 
and  soil,  in  distribution  of  land  and  water,  in  the  relation  of 
island  and  continent,  and  in  the  flora  and  fauna  of  both,  the 
bodies  and  the  dispositions  of  men  must  be  affected,  their 
numbers  modified,  their  employments  cast  into  dift'erent  moulds, 
and  their  polities  tend  to  divergent  lines  of  development,  is 
admitted  on  all  hands,  and  has  been  frequently  insisted  on  by 
writers  who  have  treated  of  the  sciences  subsidiary  to  history. 
But  to  represent  such  external  influences  as  all  in  all,  and 
reduce  history  to  a  mere  study  of  man  as  shaped  by  them,  is 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD  IN  HISTORY.  iii 

surely  no  less  an  exaggeration  than  that  opposite  extreme  of 
hero-worship  which  resolves  it  into  a  series  of  biographies. 
However  difficult  it  may  be,  in  accounting  for  events,  to 
measure  the  respective  shares  of  great  personalities  on  the 
one  hand,  and  circumstantial  pressures  on  the  other,  l)oth 
causes  are  alive  upon  the  field  ;  and  neither  of  them  has  any 
pretension  to  silence  the  other,  and  claim  to  tell  the  whole 
tale  itself.  Will  you  assure  me  that  Christianity  must  have 
turned  up  in  no  very  different  form  without  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
aird  the  Keformation  without  the  reformers,  and  the  great 
inventions  of  printing,  of  the  mariner's  compass,  of  the  steam- 
engine,  without  their  particular  inventors  ?  I  excuse  myself 
from  listening  to  so  paradoxical  a  slight  passed  on  the  original 
inspirations  and  intense  will  of  exceptional  persons  of  past 
ages.  Are  you  so  captivated,  on  the  other  hand,  \)\  the 
brilliant  genius,  or  the  marvellous  wisdom,  of  some  favourite 
whom  you  admire,  or  some  master  whom  you  revere,  as  to 
lift  him  into  free  air  above  all  earthly  contact  with  his  time, 
and  forget  that  he  was  born  in  a  local  home,  hemmed  in  by 
social  habitudes,  and  able  to  drink  only  of  the  stream  of 
thought  from  earlier  times,  and  breathe  only  the  air  of  his 
own  ?  and  do  you  resent  the  suggestion  that  his  individuality 
was  not  the  solitary  cause  of  the  new  epoch  dated  from  his 
life?  I  can  only  wonder  at  so  strange  a  disregard  of  the 
restraining  conditions  against  which  even  the  intensest  Inuiian 
energy  matches  itself  in  vain.  Recognition  must  be  given  to 
both  sets  of  causes  ;  and  the  reason  for  excluding  the  plnjHical 
from  our  present  reckoning  is  not  that  it  is  disowned,  and 
treated  as  absent,  but  that  it  is  neutral  in  the  account  which 
it  aims  to  settle.  That  account  lies  between  our  pergonal 
hnmanity  and  God's  spiritual  agency  in  us,  not  his  2^^>}l^^^(i^ 
agency  in  nature  ;  and  we  carry  our  scrutiny  into  history  only 
in  so  far  as  its  character  springs  from  the  moral  alternatives 
of  our  voluntary  life  and  the  divine  relation  ^\itll  them.  All 
else,  even  though  happening  to  man,  belongs  to  the  tbeme 
of  "God  in  nature;"  this  alone  remains  for  the  quest  of 
"  God  in  history." 

What,  then,  is  the  l^ind   of  test  by  which,  on  tliis  crowded 
stage,  tlie  two  wills  mav  be  distinguished?     Exactlvthe  s;ime 


112  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN   RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

as  that  which  serves  us  within  the  inclosure  of  the  individual 
mind.  There,  as  we  have  found,  it  is  God  that  ifisjnres  for 
man  to  realize.  The  ideals  are  his :  the  actuals  that  come 
out  of  them,  or  that  fail  to  come  out  of  them,  are  ours.  We 
feel  his  authority,  we  know  his  look,  in  whatever  stands 
before  our  thought  as  higher,  and  claims  us  as  its  own.  We 
are  conscious  of  unfaithfulness,  we'  pass  under  eclipse  of 
divine  light,  in  refusing  to  rise  to  the  appeal,  and  staying  to 
do  our  own  work  upon  the  levels  of  ease.  It  is  no  otherwise 
on  t]ie  large  scale  of  history.  Nations,  as  well  as  private 
persons,  have  their  impulses  and  opportunities,  their  gleams 
of  a  better,  their  temptations  to  a  worse  :  and  here,  also,  ta 
give  the  higher  initiative  is  the  divine  part ;  to  fling  it  away 
and  forget  it,  or  to  follow  it  up  the  glorious  ascent,  is  the 
human.  Hence,  on  the  principle  that  man  cannot  lift 
himself,  but  can  freel}^  give  himself  to  be  lifted,  a  simple  rule 
emerges  from  tracking  the  steps  of  Providence  through  the 
ages.  Where  there  is  nothing  to  be  seen  but  bare  conservation 
of  what  good  there  is,  or,  at  best,  only  a  local  extension  of  it 
to  classes  or  regions  not  brought  up  to  its  level,  the  human 
will  is  the  chief  agent,  working  on  its  own  prosaic  and 
unaspiring  flat,  and  content  to  stand  alone.  Where  there  is 
continuous  growth,  and  advance  to  loftier  stages  of  life  and 
character,  and  the  men  of  each  generation  leave  the  world 
better  than  they  found  it,  there  we  are  on  the  vestiges  of  the 
divine  Agent,  and  trace  his  moral  government  in  history.  It 
is  not,  therefore,  in  the  great  stationary  civilizations  of  Egypt 
or  Eastern  Asia,  where  reverence  spends  itself  in  locking  up 
stores  of  truth  and  art,  of  faith  and  character,  and  guarding 
them  as  much  from  increase  as  from  waste,  and  worshipping 
the  golden  key  which  shuts  them  from  the  air  of  heaven,  that 
we  can  study  the  path  of  Providence  through  the  ages.  They 
are,  indeed,  wonderful  witnesses  of  a  cartain  stage  in  the 
education  of  mankind,  which,  l3ut  for  their  longevity,  would 
have  been  lost  to  our  knowledge,  and  impossible  to  our 
belief ;  but  it  is  in  the  relations  which  link  them  to  what  is 
prior  and  posterior,  and  not  in  any  history  within  themselves, 
that  they  claim  a  section  in  the  divine  scheme  of  the  world. 
If  we  would  recognize  the  living  course  of  God's  discipline  for 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD  IN  HISTORY.  113 

our  nature,   we  must  look  to  p)'o(iressire  civiUzations  which 
have  not  survived  their  function,  and  then  ])een  content  to 
petrify  into  solemn  mausoleums  of  dead  ages,  hut  which  have 
had   an    influence    far   outliving   themselves,  mingling   and 
throhbing  in  the  xevy  life-blood  of  the  world,  and  tincturing 
in  after-ages  even  the  very  minds  that  know  them  least.     The 
few  nations   which   have  been  capable  of  this   creative  and 
impelling  action,  have  been  made  the  depositories  of  successive 
divine  trusts,  each  carrying  our  nature  along  some  line  of 
advance  it  had  never  tried  before  ;  and  all  their  movements 
have    at    times   been   brought  by  converging  dispositions  to 
meet  and  melt,  and  give  a  nobler  volume  to  our  humanity. 
There  is,  however,  a  theological  prepossession,  which  we  must 
beware  of  taking  with  us  into  the  study  of  the  world.     It  is 
common,  and   it  is   natural,  to   imagine   that    God   is   most 
intimately  present  to  those  who  know  him,  and  least  to  those 
who   know  him  not :  so  that  true  or  false  belief  respecting 
divine  things  may  be  taken  as  marks  to  show  where  in  history 
his  vestiges  are  to  be  found,  and  where  they  are  not.     In 
conformity  with  this  view,  the  Jew  has  been  habitually  treated 
as  within  the  sacred  circle, — a  subject  of  the  kingdom  of  God  ; 
the   Gentile   as   beyond  it, — an  exile  in  the  domain  of  the 
Prince   of    darkness :  and   nations   have    been    regarded    as 
favoured  with  divine  light,  according  as  they  stood  nearer  the 
monotheism   of    the   one,    or    were    farther    astray    in    the 
polytheism   of   the    other.     The   history  of    men's   thoughts 
about  God  would  thus  be  identical  with  the  historj^  of  God's 
own  dealings  with  them ;  and  to  follow  out  tlie  religions  of 
the  world  would  be  to  survey  the  track  of  his  living  communion 
with  the  human  mind.     How  utterly  such  a  rule  would  mis- 
lead us  must  be  evident  to  any  one  who  lays  his  heart  open  to 
the  nobleness  of  Pagan  virtue,  and  who  is  not  afraid  to  see 
the  meanness  and  cruelties  compatible  with  Orthodox  belief. 
It  is  plain,  that,  where  (to  judge  by  the  liefiida  Fidei)  God 
may  seem  to  be  best  known,  he  often  leaves  no  living  sign, 
and  the  dry  ground  yields  no  tender  grass  and  flowers  to 
mark  where  his  fertilizing  dews  descend  ;  and  that,  to  minds 
from  whose  creed  he  appears  quite  hid.  he  no  less  often  goes 
in  the  dark,  and  lundling  before  them  the  lamp  of  honour,  or 

I 


114  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

the  star  of  truth,  draws  them,  they  know  not  whither,  except 
that  it  is  to  a  higher  than  themselves.  No  doubt,  all  religions 
in  their  primitive  life  do  really  express  what  commands  the 
supreme  veneration  of  the  mind,  and  are  then  coincident 
with  the  divinest  lesson  that  has  yet  been  given  ;  and  if  their 
types  of  thought  were  as  expansive  as  our  nature,  and  content 
to  take  up  and  consecrate  every  rising  growth  of  pure  rever- 
ence and  noble  admiration  so  as  really  to  embody  whatever 
speaks  to  wonder  and  conscience,  and  to  drop  whatever  has 
withered  from  the  heart,  then,  certainly,  would  their  history 
coincide  with  the  history  of  God's  spiritual  education  of  our 
race.  But  since  they  soon  set  into  mythologies,  and  crystal- 
lize into  forms  of  speech  and  habits  of  worship  little  suscep- 
tible of  change,  they  lose  their  power  of  taking  up  new  thought 
and  love,  and  turn  to  stone.  The  tide  of  living  reverence 
flows  by  with  a  sweep  of  deviation,  and,  taking  fresh  channels, 
leaves  the  ancient  temple  stranded  on  the  delta  of  the  past, 
— monuments  of  an  earlier  humanity,  but  not  sheltering  the 
sanctities  of  to-day.  As  religion  is  the  germ,  and  spiritual 
culture  the  ripest  fruit,  of  society,  their  characteristic  pro- 
ducts are  widely  separated  in  time ;  and  it  is  inevitable  that 
traditional  faiths  and  maturer  pieties  should  part  company, 
and  that  the  highest  elements  of  mind  and  character  should 
at  last  be  found,  not  in  the  theology,  but  in  the  civilization. 

If,  however,  theology  is  too  narrow  an  enclosure  to  exhibit 
the  divine  vestiges  in  history,  we  should  go  too  far  a-field  did 
we  seek  them  indiscriminately  over  the  whole  area  and 
through  all  the  tracks  of  thought  and  art.  In  his  zeal  to  set 
free  the  idea  of  insjnration  from  the  limits  imposed  upon  it 
by  divines,  Theodore  Parker  has  left  it  inadequately  distin- 
guished from  the  ordinary  exercise  of  the  human  intellect  and 
will,  and  almost  fused  into  one  the  pliysical  action  of  God 
in  nature  and  the  spiritual  in  man.  Thus  he  says,  that 
"  through  reason,  conscience,  and  the  religious  sentiments," 
and  "  by  means  of  a  law,  certain,  regular,  and  universal  as 
gravitation,  God  inspires  men,  makes  revelation  of  truth  ; 
for  is  not  truth  as  much  a  phenomenon  of  God  as  motion 
of  matter '?  "  And,  as  if  still  more  completely  to  erase  the 
distinction,  he  suggests,  that  "  God's  action  on  matter  and  on 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD  IN  HISTORY.  ,15 

man   is  periiaps   the  same  thing  to  him,  though  it  appear 
diti'erently  modified  to  us."* 

To  press  this  alleged  analogy  between  the  dynamics  of 
nature  and  the  inspiration  of  man  is  to  fling  the  human 
personality  away.  God's  "action  on  matter"  exhausts  the 
whole  action  there  is,  and  is  identical  with  the  very  constitution 
of  the  material  world  itself:  so  that,  without  it,  matter,  if 
existing  at  all,  is  no  more  than  the  passive  nidus,  or  objective 
medium,  present  as  the  condition  of  the  divine  energy.  If 
the  case  of  man  is  the  same,  he,  too,  is  reduced  to  virtual 
nonentity,  and,  without  agency  possible  to  himself,  becomes 
the  mere  vessel  of  the  divine.  The  laws  of  his  several  facul- 
ties, that  is,  the  orderly  connection  and  consecution  of  their 
phenomena,  being  the  movement  and  march  of  God  within 
the  mind,  nothing  remains  which  can  be  predicated  of  the 
human  self ;  for  it  is  nothing  short  of  the  whole  of  his 
personal  history  which  is  thus  conveyed  over  into  the  life  of 
God.  The  more  this  doctrine  is  carried  out  into  illustrative 
examples,  the  more  serious  does  this  difficulty  become.  The 
"  Principia  "  of  Newton,  for  instance,  we  are  desired  to  regard 
as  the  product  of  inspiration  ;  and  the  measure  of  inspiration 
is  said  to  be  the  amount  of  "natural  ability  evinced  in  the 
achievement  of  each  work."  But  the  "Principia"  is  a 
book  of  deductive  reasoning,  in  which  each  step  involves  or 
necessitates  the  next,  and  lays  the  track  of  one  continuous 
intellectual  movement,  the  partition  of  which  through  its 
whole  length  between  two  minds  is  surely  inconceivable. 
Who,  then,  is  tite  reasoner  answerable  for  the  processes  of 
demonstration  ?  Is  it  Newton  '?  Then  are  they  activities  of 
his  personality,  and  are  not  to  be  looked  for  nh  ci-lrd.  in  the 
operation  of  another  life.  Is  it  God '?  Then  the  intellect  of 
Newton  is  rendered  otiose,  with  only  the  residuary  function, 
at  best,  of  a  receptive  and  recording  obedience.  Moreover, 
if  the  movement  and  force  of  the  natural  faculties  are  to  be 
deemed  an  inspiration  from  a  superhuman  source,  we  shall 
have  to  recognize  as  divine,  not  only  the  truth,  beauty,  and 
goodness  to  which  they  lead,  but  the  false,  the  ugly,  and  the 
evil  issues  into  which  they  go  astray  ;  for  these  are  results 

*  Discoui-.se  of  ^Matters  pertaining  to  Religion.     Bk.  ii.  cli.  viii. 


I    -1 


ii6  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

ot"  the  same  faculties,  often  in  the  same  men,  and  interspersed 
among  the  tentatives  of  the  same  effort  of  genius.  The 
individual  mind  is  thus  lost  in  God ;  and  God  is  no  longer 
clear  of  the  imperfections  of  the  human  mind. 

In  order,  then,  to  save  the  ])ersonal  power  in  man,  and  to 
leave  him  any  real  partnership  in  histor}^  we  must  concede 
to  him  a  mental  constitution  of  his  own, — a  trust  of  both 
intellectual  faculty  and  moral  will ;  and  must  limit  the  divine 
part  to  the  intuitive  data,  from  which  every  activity  of  our 
inner  nature  must  start.  Each  power  of  the  soul  has  its  own 
appropriate  object  towards  which  it  feels  its  way, — reason  to 
truth,  imagination  to  beauty,  conscience  to  right.  The  pre- 
sentation of  these  to  us  is  not  our  own  doing  ;  the  regular 
pursuit  of  them  is.  If  we  say  that  all  these  ideals  uncon- 
sciously directing  us  are  divine,  we  remove  the  limitations 
from  the  theological  conception  of  inspiration,  without 
flinging  the  human  causality  into  the  mists  of  the  pantheistic 
abyss. 

In  trying  to  trace  the  divine  initiative  here  and  there  in  the 
education  of  the  human  race,  we  must  throw  out  of  the 
account  the  earlier  and  remoter  portions  of  mankind,  and 
take  up  only  the  threads  which  are  visibh'  twined  into  the 
present. 

There  is  but  one  influence  in  the  world  that  has  transcended 
in  beneficent  power  the  genius  of  ancient  Greece ;  and  the 
spiritual  providence  of  God  in  the  historical  education  of  our 
race  has  drawn  on  it  as  largely  to  nourish  the  intellect  of  the 
later  ages,  as  his  natural  providence  has  drawn  on  the  atmo- 
sphere to  feed  the  fires  of  animal  life.  It  is  not,  however, 
from  the  gods,  but  from  the  men,  of  Athens  that  an  exhaust- 
less  and  refining  light  has  penetrated  the  whole  organism  of 
human  thought.  If  the  temples  speak  to  us  still,  it  is  not  of 
Athena,  but  of  Phidias  ;  not  by  their  rites  and  sacrifices,  but 
by  their  proportions  and  their  sculptures.  Scarcely  does 
Homer  himself  make  their  Olympus  endurable ;  nay,  it  had 
already  become  revolting  to  Plato ;  and  our  patience  with  it 
has  returned  only  because  it  is  so  far  from  us  :  and,  after  all, 
we  are  ever  glad  to  descend  with  the  old  poet  to  the  plain  of 
Troy,  and  make  him  sing  rather  of  the  defiance  of  chiefs,  and 


Chap.  IV. I  GOD   IN  HISTORY.  W] 

the  talk  and  tears  of  women.    It  is  the  literature,  the  art,  the 
political  life,  of  Greece,  that  constitute  its  significance  for  the 
world,  and  form  its  contri])ution  to  the  providential  education 
of  mankind.     No  more  striking  evidence  could  we  have  that 
the  divine  initiative  may  take  other  forms  than  that  of  theo- 
logic  truth,  and  may  lurk  in  the  unconscious  tendencies  of  a 
people's  mind,  rather  than  come  to  the  front  in  their  defined 
beliefs  and  external  worship.     If,  in  this  instance,  we  lift  the 
veil   of  their  visible  life,  and,  passing   behind,  interpret   for 
them  the  inspiration  of  which  they  were  the  subjects  unawares, 
we  shall  find  it  in  a  haunting  feeling  of  an  indirelling  divine- 
ness  embodied  in  the  cosmos,  and  interfused  through  all  its 
parts,  including  man  as  one  of  them ;  for,  to  the  Greek,  the 
universe  and  human  life  never  appeared  as  in  their  essence 
antithetic  to  the  divine,  but  rather  as  clothing  and  manifesting 
it,  and  moulded  by  its  inner  thought.     To  him  the  brilliancy 
of  the  heavens  and  the  beauty  of  the  earth  were  no  dead 
picture,  asleep  on  this  or  that  stretched  canvas  of  dimension, 
but   were   alive,   and   looked   at   him   through   Avaking   eyes 
expecting  their  response.     Through  all  the  products  of  his 
genius,   from  the  early  mythology  to  the  philosophy  which 
destroyed  it,  this  feeling  of  a  background  of  gods  behind  all 
that  appears  is  traceable  as  their  creative  inspiration.     In  one 
view,  his  very  polytheism  is  due  to  the  tenacity  of  this  implicit 
religion ;  for  it  consisted,  in  its  origin,  rather  of  a  succession, 
than  of  a  copartnership  of  gods  :  and,  if  an  original  unity  passed 
into  a  later  multiplicity,  it  was  because  the  power  first  conceived 
was  too  dark  and  rude,  too   convulsive   and   gigantesque, — 
adequate,  perhaps,  to  the  period  of  primeval  night,  and  half 
separated  elements,  but  no  more  fit  for  the  elaboration  and 
the  rule  of  the  finished  cosmos  than  a  hyperborean  barbarian 
to  be  Archon  at  Athens.     Hence,  as  the  theogony  descends 
from  Chaos,  Ourano-s,  and  Gaia,  through  Zeus  and  Metis,  to 
Prometheus  and  Athena,  a  progress  is  evident  from  the  more 
material,  indeterminate,  and  violent  to  the  more  intellectual, 
orderly,  and  fair,  culminating  at  last  in  the  reason,  the  arts, 
and  the  civic  union  of  mankind.      As  the  universe  fell  into 
intelligible  order  and  clearer  l)eauty  before  his  eye,  the  Greek 
resorted  to  more  gods,  because  he  wanted  better  gods,  yet 


ii8  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

could  not  let  the  old  ones  go.  Nor  does  anything  more  finely- 
express  his  faith  in  the  ascendency  of  mind  and  order 
everywhere,  than  the  Oresteia  of  ^Eschylus,  with  its  conflict 
between  the  elder  Erinnues  and  the  younger  divinities  of 
Light  and  Thought,  ending  in  the  recognized  authority  of 
civic  justice,  and  the  removal  of  wild  vengeance  to  hide  itself 
in  a  grove  beyond  the  walls.  Human  society  itself  thus 
comes  to  be  regarded  as  the  divine,  set  up  on  earth  ;  and  its 
laws,  its  rights,  its  culture,  and  its  harmonies,  are  the  tenta- 
tive miniature  copies  of  a  real  but  unapproachable  perfection. 
And  what  was  only  felt  in  the  mythology  advanced  into 
distinct  theory  in  the  philosophy.  The  whole  language,  not 
of  Plato  only,  but  of  Aristotle,  is  pervaded  by  the  assump- 
tion of  the  inherence  of  thought  in  things,  and  of  the  corre- 
spondence between  the  steps  of  natural  evolution  from 
generic  conception  to  individualization,  and  the  inverse  steps 
of  our  mind  from  phenomenon  to  law  in  ascending  grades : 
so  that  all  our  knowledge  is  a  communion  of  intellect  within 
us,  and  intehect  without  us, — a  thought  on  our  part  respect- 
ing what  itself  is  also  thought.  The  same  word  trnth  served 
to  express  what  was  real  and  imperishable  in  the  world, 
and  the  ajJiirehension  of  it  by  us ;  and  the  word  is  the  same, 
because  no  difference  was  felt  in  the  things.  This  dominant 
peculiarity  of  the  Greek,  while  it  is  the  key  to  his  own 
intellectual  development,  has  transmitted  a  thrill  of  power 
through  the  mental  culture  of  the  world.  Engaged  on  the 
beauty  of  the  cosmos,  and  its  claim  to  be  reflected  in  human 
life,  the  Athenian  genius,  shedding  its  subtlety  and  vividness 
and  strength  through  a  marvellous  language  moulded  to  its 
ends,  has  touched  the  most  delicate  springs  of  thought,  and 
at  once  brightened  the  finite  margin  of  things  with  images  of 
loveliness,  and  deepened  the  background  with  infinite  prob- 
lems. Scarcely  greater  has  been  the  enlargement  of  the 
physical  universe  by  the  brilliant  discoveries  of  modern 
times,  than  the  gain  of  intellectual  space  and  light  by  the 
Hellenic  race ;  and  while  its  own  theology  has  perished,  and 
its  temples  have  crumbled  awa}^  it  has  imparted  to  the 
religion  of  succeedmg  times  that  sense  of  an  immanent 
divineness  in  the  world,  of  a  mingling  of  thought  with  the 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD  IN  HISTORY.  119 

very  substance  of  things,  which  has  forever  made  the  visible 
beauty,  truth,  and  good  a  symbol  of  the  invisible. 

Different  in  every  way,  and  ethically  far  higher,  has  been 
the  function  intrusted  to  the  Hebrew  race  ;  viz.,  to  live  upon 
the  earth  for  thousands  of  years,  whether  in  society  or  in 
long  exile,  as  subjects  of  an  immutable  justice  and  mercy, 
and  bear  an  unswerving  witness  to  the  moral  government  of 
t]te  world.  As  the  Greek  interfused  the  divine  essence 
through  the  cosmic  space,  so  did  the  Jew  follow  the  divine 
footsteps  down  the  tracks  of  Idstoric  time,  and  make  the 
course  of  history  a  highway  for  his  God.  True,  he  also 
owned  the  power  of  God  in  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  as 
their  Creator  and  the  Lord  of  all ;  but  they  stood  in  a  differ- 
ent relation  to  their  Author.  Their  life  was  not  his  life  ; 
they  were  not  the  organism  of  his  manifested  being,  and  he 
the  soul  of  their  rhythm  and  beauty,  so  that  both  together 
were  but  the  outer  and  the  inner  side  of  the  same  divine- 
ness, — its  transient  glance  and  its  eternal  rest.  He  was 
separate  from  them,  and  looked  down  upon  them  from  a 
heaven  above  the  heavens.  He  set  them  up  as  the  decora- 
tions and  furniture  of  his  universe ;  he  worked  them  as  his 
instruments.  He  sent  the  elements  upon  his  errands,  turned 
them  hither  and  thither  as  blind  executants  of  his  momentary 
will,  and  would  in  the  end  fling  them  and  all  nature  aside  as 
the  worn-out  implements  of  an  imperishable  perfection  which 
needs  them  not.  They  are  his  works, — monuments  of  his 
acts  of  skill  and  power  in  the  past, — but  are  not  what  can  tell 
the  story  of  his  thought  in  the  present.  Once  for  all,  the 
Almighty  had  spread  the  firmament,  and  hung  up  the  stars, 
and  upheaved  the  mountains,  and  set  bounds  to  the  deep. 
He  spake,  and  they  stood  fast.  But  his  life  was  with  the  sons 
of  men,  to  give  them  truth,  to  guide  them  right,  to  weed  out 
the  worthless,  to  organize  the  faithful,  and  make  all  things 
work  together  towards  an  everlasting  righteousness.  The 
architecture  of  the  universe  doubtless  spake  his  glory  ;  but 
it  was  only  the  scenery  of  a  drama,  whose  plan  disposed  of 
all  the  nations,  and  unfolded  itself  through  all  the  ages. 

The  first  conception  of  that  drama,  formed  by  the  Jewish 
mind,  was  certainly  small  enougli,— a  simple  tissue  of  family 


I20  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

vicissitudes,  gradually  widening  into  a  larger  design,  embrac- 
ing the  providences  of  a  group  of  federated  tribes.     But  the 
faith  in  justice,  the  vision  of  a  righteous  plan,  once  given, 
sufficed  for  all  the  exigencies  of  an   expanding  life,  and  drew 
into  it  province  after  province  of  the  spreading  world  which 
captivity  or  colonization  opened  to  Jewish  experience.     The 
area  of  the  divine  stage  seemed  to  become  broader  with  every 
age,  the  actors  more  numerous,  the  plot  more  vast.     Damas- 
cus and  Tyre,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  Antioch  and  Alexandria, 
appeared  upon  the  stage  which   once  stretched  only  from  Dan 
to  Beersheba ;    and    the    domestic    piety  traditional    in    the 
family  of  the  Oriental  sheik  opened  its  heart  to   take  the 
world  into  the  embrace  of  its  providence.     The  perseverance 
and  the  progress    of   the    fundamental    conception    may  be 
traced  through  the  post-Maccabean  literature,  till  at  last,  in 
the  Book  of  Enoch,  the  whole  known  history  of  mankind — 
distributed  into  ten  periods,  like  a  poem  in  ten  cantos — is 
presented  as  a  divine  epic,  realizing  at  the  end,  by  extinction 
of  all  that  hurts  and  defiles,  that  civitas  Dei  which  had  been 
in  contemplation  from  the  beginning.     It  must  be  owned  that 
this  widening  thought  was  long  in  bringing  wider  sympathies. 
The  hard  line  between  the  -Jew  ordained  for  glory,  the  Gentile 
for  perdition,  only  wavers  and  softens    a  little,    remaining, 
though  obscurely,  pitilessly  there.     But  at  length  the  broader 
piety  subdues  the  heart   to   a  broader    humanity.      In    the 
Apocalypse  of  Ezra,  the  scanty  limits  of  salvation  haunt  the 
very  soul  of  the  author  :  he  bewails  them  in  pathetic  tones  ; 
and,  though  he  tries  to  banish  the  complaint,  he  evidently 
feels,  that,  at  the  cost  of  so  sweeping  a  retribution,  the  kmg- 
dom  of  God  is  too  dearly  purchased. 

With  this  fruitless  touch  of  pity,  however,  he  leaves  the 
problem  where  it  was.  But  how  tenaciously  the  great  idea  of 
continuous  historical  development  was  held  as  the  key  to  the 
providential  plan,  is  evident  from  the  comparisons  by  which 
he  illustrates  the  course  of  humanity  on  our  earth.  It  is 
like  the  order  of  the  seasons,  which  cannot  be  inverted,  but 
must  pass  through  its  regulated  round  ;  or  like  the  successive 
births  of  child  after  child  to  the  same  mother,  till  the  family 
is  complete,  and  the  organism  of  relations  constitutes  a  moral 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD   IN  HISTORY.  121 

whole.  Who  can  deny  that  this  theory,  fairly  carried  out, 
must  foster  a  temper  at  once  prospective  and  humane? 
With  the  living  God  to  lead  them  on,  the  centuries  must 
brighten  as  they  roll,  or,  if  a  darkness  broods  over  them, 
must  burst  into  richer  sunshine  after  the  passing  storm. 
The  golden  time,  the  perfection  of  society,  the  purity  and 
beauty  of  humanity,  lie  in  the  future,  not  in  the  past ;  and 
life  is  to  be  spent,  not  in  sighs  of  regret,  but  in  the  joy  of 
hope  and  the  power  of  faith.  By  this  grand  and  profound 
conception,  the  unity  of  God  descends  upon  the  fragments  of 
the  world,  and  passes  through  the  conflicts  of  time,  flinging 
its  embrace  around  alienated  men,  and  fastening  the  sepa- 
rated links  of  history.  Whatever  mistaken  interpretations 
of  concrete  events  may  have  marked  the  course  of  this 
belief,  it  has  brought  home  to  us  the  moral  oneness  of 
our  humanity,  and  has  no  less  bound  into  a  system  the 
phenomena  of  historic  time  than  the  law  of  gravitation  the 
bodies  of  external  space. 

The  mind  of  both  Greek  and  .Jew  had  a  prevailing  tendency 
outward, — upon  the  spectacle  of  nature,  and  the  spectacle  of 
man.  The  instinct  of  the  one  was  to  set  the  universe  before 
it  in  an  order  of  beauty  and  of  thought ;  that  of  the  other  to 
set  the  fates  of  nations  before  it  in  an  order  of  divine  justice. 
The  one  gave  acosmical,  the  other  a  social  and  political  faith. 
The  effect  of  this  objective  tendency  is  apparent  through  all 
the  differences  which  separate  their  conceptions  of  the  best 
life.  Their  ideal  of  human  perfection  is,  in  both  instances, 
thrown  into  the  form  of  a  .state :  it  is  planted  out  and  em- 
bodied in  a  social  organism  ruled  and  pervaded  by  reason  in 
the  one  case,  by  righteousness  in  the  other.  When  Plato  says, 
"  Unless  philosophers  obtain  the  government  of  states,  or 
kings  and  rulers  become  philosophers,  there  can  be  no  hope 
of  any  end  to  the  evils  of  commonwealths,  or,  as  I  l^elieve,  to 
the  sufferings  of  humanity,"*  lie  truly  paints  the  Hellenic 
dream  of  an  intellectually  harmonized  society.  When  the 
Hebrew  prophet  says,  "  The  dominion  shall  be  given  to  the 
saints  of  the  most  High,  whose  kingdom  is  an  everlasting 
kingdom, "t  he  is  intent  upon  that  vision  of  a  divine  common- 
"  Republic,  -173.  C.  i'  l^au.  vii.  27. 


122  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED   IN  RELIGION         [Book  I, 

wealth,  which,  for  the  Christian,  has  passed  into  the  heaven 
above,  with  its  shadow  only  in  the  Church  below.     In  neither 
case  was  the  individual  regarded  asinhimself  a  whole,  competent 
to  have  ends  of  his  own  investing  him  with  inalienable  rights, 
and  imposing  on  him  duties  wdth  which  none  could  inter- 
meddle.    He  was  to  serve  only  as  material  for  Ijuilding  up  a 
structure   of  composite   grace  and  statelier    proportions, — a 
plinth  of  the  palace,    a  "  living  stone "   of  the  temple,    an 
element  lost  in  the  collective  beauty,  or  a  support  invisibly 
present  in  the  edifice  of  holiness.     He  had  no  claims  apart 
from  the  civic  or  sacred  social  unity  to  which  he  belonged, 
which  alone  redeemed  him  from  his  solitary  insignificance, 
and  conferred  upon  him  whatever  importance  or  dignity  he 
had,  and  which   had   an   absolute   title   to  dispose  of  him, 
through  all  the  factors  of  his  being,  in  the  interest  of  its  own 
perfection.     The  immense  power  of  this  preconception  is  evi- 
denced by  the  strange  centralization  and  the  revolting  com- 
munism of  Plato's  Eepublic,   leaving  nothing  to  private  life 
except  in  the  lowest  stratum  of  the  community,  and  ordering, 
without  scruple,  the  affairs  of  birth  and  death,  the  number  of 
permitted  lives,  the  diet,  the  occupations,  the  training,  the 
abode,  the  possessions,  of  every  citizen.     It  is  but  a  modifica- 
tion of  the  same  fundamental  assumption,  that,  for  his  rela- 
tion to  God,  the  Jew  was  dependent  on  his  nationality.     His 
religion  was  an  ethnological  distinction.     It  was  not  he,  it 
was  his  tribe,  that  held  a  place  in  the  regards  and  purposes  of 
the  most  High ;  and,  if  he  forfeited  his  place  in  the  sacred 
caste,  he  fell  under  divine  as  well  as  human  excommunication. 
His  piety,  therefore,   was  mainly  patriotic  and  domestic, — a 
martyr's  faithfulness  to  the  guardian  of  his  people,  an  in- 
herited worship  of  the  God  of  his  fathers ;  and  all  its  more 
private  applications  were  but  inner  circles  of  derivative  affec- 
tion embraced  by  this  wider  circumference. 

Need  I  say  that  there  yet  remains  a  vein  of  character 
unopened  by  these  workings  of  thought,  penetrating  and 
powerful  as  they  are  ?  To  check  the  tyranny  of  the  social 
idea,  there  is  needed  a  third  inspiration, — a  sense  of  the 
claims  and  the  possibility  of  indiridKal  perfection  as  a  supreme 
end,  entitled  to  hold  its  ground  even  against  the  pretensions 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD   IN  HISTORY.  123 

of  apparent  social  good.  Under  its  first  rude  form  of  self- 
subsisting  courage  and  manly  independence,  Plato  already 
recognized  at  a  distance  this  type  of  character  as  special  to 
the  northern  barbarians  ;  and,  for  ages  after,  it  vindicated  and 
secured  its  place  in  history  by  stormy  heavings  of  a  freedom 
seemingly  wild,  yet  not  without  secret  centres  and  invisible 
lines  of  loyalty  and  obedience,  pouring  them  in  desolating 
floods  over  the  lands  of  the  enervated  Latin  populations. 
Wlien  their  rough  work  was  done,  it  became  clear  that  their 
characteristic  feeling  of  inward  freedom  carried  in  it  nothing 
lawless  and  ungenerous,  no  senseless  defiance  of  things  right 
and  sacred.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  a  fresh  fountain  of 
affection  and  devotion,  hitherto  but  little  known,  where  the 
reverence  which  tinges  life  issues  direct  from  the  personal 
consciousness  as  its  spring,  and  spreads  thence  to  the  nearest 
homefields  of  life,  and  onward  till  it  freshens  and  fertilizes  the 
landscape  fading  in  the  horizon.  The  Teutonic  independence, 
in  its  aspect  towards  divine  things,  becomes  that  sense  of 
personal  relation  between  the  single  soul  and  the  Spirit  of 
God,  which  is  the  mainspring  of  the  private  sanctities,  and 
releases  the  heart  from  the  constraint  of  law  into  the  freedom 
of  love.  The  Germanic  piety,  in  all  its  native  movements, 
has  been  marked  l)ya  peculiar  inwardness  and  spiritual  depth, 
strongly  contrasting  with  the  more  objective  faith  and  casuis- 
tical self-scrutiny  of  the  Latin  churches.  The  mystic  devotion 
of  Eckart,  of  Tauler,  of  the  Theologia  Germanica,  finding  its 
way  at  last  into  Luther's  doctrine  of  "justification  by  faith," 
expresses  that  self-abandonment  of  the  soul,  that  merging 
of  it  in  the  life  of  God,  which,  though  breathing  the  most 
passionate  humility,  can  spring  only  from  the  sense  of 
essential  and  ultimate  affinity  with  him. 

\\\  claiming  this  sul)jective  and  solitary  religion  as  the 
special  Teutonic  inspu-ation,  I  do  not  forget  its  occasional  and 
striking  manifestations  elsewhere.  Here  and  there,  in  all 
ages,  an  inward  and  meditative  piety  has  possessed  the  intenser 
natures.  It  dictated  many  a  tender  phrase  of  the  Hebrew 
poets,  it  was  so  perfectly  embodied  in  Jesus  Christ,  that  it 
shapes  his  very  lineaments  in  our  imagination.  Its  pathetic 
tones  and  sweet  quietude  return  upon  us  in  the  lives  and  words 


124  AUTHORITY  IMPLIED  IN  RELIGION.         [Book  I. 

of  the  older  Christian  mystics.  But  these  are  exceptional  and 
scattered  phenomena ;  and  not  even  the  authoritative  image 
of  the  Son  of  God  availed  to  give  large  extension  to  this  kind 
of  devotion,  till  its  appeal  fell  upon  a  nation  just  ready  to  find 
its  native  genius,  and  to  rebel  against  the  externality  of  sacer- 
dotal Christendom.  From  the  time  when  Luther  gave  voice 
to  the  passionate  struggles  of  his  heart  and  conscience,  and 
told  how  he  found  the  perfect  peace  of  a  surrendered  nature, 
there  has  been  a  deep  and  wide  response  among  his  people, 
and  thence  throughout  the  world,  to  his  gospel  of  faith  and 
communion  of  the  Spirit ;  and  the  lonely  pieties  which  need 
no  priest,  and  which,  in  humbling  the  soul  before  God,  set  it 
erect  before  man,  have  passed  from  the  rare  recluse  to  form 
the  habits  of  multitudes  and  the  ideal  of  churches.  Nay,  this 
inwardness  and  reflectiveness  of  mind  has  spread  far  beyond 
the  bounds  of  religion  :  it  has  found  its  way  into  philosophy, 
into  poetry,  into  art,  and  deepened  the  whole  spirit  of  our 
western  civilization. 

Our  modern  religion  is  a  triple  cord  into  which  are  twined, 
as  strands  once  separate,  the  Greek,  the  Jewish,  the  German 
elements  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  which,  where  it  is  per- 
fectly woven,  combines  the  strength  of  all.  To  fabricate  such 
a  texture  is  the  work  of  countless  hands  through  many  ages. 
The  genius  of  each  progressive  nation  unfolds  itself  at  first  in 
isolation  or  in  opposition.  The  culture  of  the  Greek  was  in- 
digenous, of  the  Jew  was  separatist,  of  the  Cxerman  born  in 
conflict.  And  the  distribution  of  the  several  factors  of  the 
higher  civilization  has  been  effected  by  other  nations  than 
those  in  which  they  were  original ;  the  Eomans  becoming  for 
the  world  the  purveyors  of  the  Hellenic  and  Jewish  ideals,  and 
the  Anglo- Saxon  race  of  the  Teutonic.  But,  when  the  various 
agencies  have  played  their  part,  the  dividing  barriers  which 
rendered  each  source  provincial  finally  disappear  ;  and  a  field 
is  opened  by  the  providence  of  God  in  which  the  distinct 
streams  pass  into  confluence  and  swell  mto  mightier  volume, 
and  flow  on  with  more  fertilizing  power.  Not,  indeed,  that 
any  of  the  tributary  fountains  of  civilization  can  come  down 
to  us  untainted,— the  limpid  vehicles  of  perfect  truth.  All 
brmg  with  them  elements  both  pure  and  impure  :  and  it  must 


Chap.  IV.]  GOD  IN  HISTORY.  125 

still  be  the  problem  of  our  wisdom  to  precipitate  the  latter, 
and  lead  the  former  to  nourish  the  roots  of  whatever  is  fair 
and  fruit-bearing.  It  yet  remains,  therefore,  for  us  to  con- 
sider how  to  Hing  down  the  evil,  and  reserve  the  good,  and 
recognize  whatever  has  divine  claims  upon  us  in  our  historical 
inheritance  of  religion. 


BOOK    11. 

AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED. 


CHAPTEE  I. 

THE    CATHOLICS    AND    THE    CHURCH. 

The   present,   it   has   often   been   said,   virtually  contains 
within  it  the  whole  past.     The  products  of  art,  of  literature, 
of  law,  may  largely  perish,  and  leave  many  a  former  age  with 
scanty  monuments   to   bear  witness  of    its   genius  ;  but   its 
character  and  ideas,  mingling  with  the  life  of  the  succeeding 
generation,  tincture  that  newer  time,  and,  however  traceless 
in  the  fresh  colour  of  the  immediate  hour,  could  not  be  with- 
drawn  thence   without   changing   its  hue  throughout.      We 
cannot  say  that  this  law  of  transmission  has  any  selective 
power  to  swallow  up  the  evil,  and  hand  down  only  the  good  ; 
and,  if  the  stream  of  history  grows  clearer  as  it  liows,  it  is 
not  that  the  current  will  not  carry  down  both  alike,  but  that 
the  i^urifying  interposition  of  reason  and  conscience  arrests 
the  turbid  elements,  and  tries  to  let  only  the  sweet  waters 
through.     In  proportion  as  this  interposition  fails,  the  foun- 
tains   of    life   and   the   marshes   of  death    send   down  their 
contents  together.     Prejudices  pass  with  truths  ;  the  seeds  of 
vices  are  entangled  in  the  same  eddy  that  l)ears  the  virtues ; 
and,  rich  as  the  crop  may  be  in   the  helds  below,  there  will 
still  be  tares  appearing  between.     Every  later  civilization  is 
of  necessity  a  mixed  product,  largo  witli   the  accessions,  but 
tainted  with  the  impurities,  of  earlier  experience ;  and.  what- 
ever treasures  it   has   taken  up  into  it  from  the  faiths  and 
philosophies  of  nations  variously  endowed,   it  cannot  escape 


128  A  UTHORITY  A  R  TIFICIALL  V  M ISP  LA  CED.    [  Book  1 1 . 

its  heritage  calso  of  human  imperfection,  or  be  spared  the  duty 
of  severing  the  good  from  the  evil.  Our  historical  inherit- 
ance of  religion  is  richer  in  the  elements  of  truth  and  the 
sources  of  moral  power  than  any  ever  intrusted  to  any 
previous  age.  We  live  en\droned  with  a  sublimer  nature,  we 
are  conscious  of  a  more  sacred  humanity,  we  own  a  wider 
providence  in  history,  than  was  opened  to  our  forefathers. 
The  cosmic  intellect  was  less  august  for  Plato,  the  communion 
of  the  Spirit  less  deep  for  Tauler,  the  moral  drama  of  the 
world  less  grand  for  Isaiah  and  for  Paul,  than  for  us.  But 
along  with  this  progressive  truth  are  many  lingering  errors, 
grown  worse  from  their  misplacement  in  a  larger  scene.  The 
ampler  our  horizon,  the  more  does  the  clinging  mist  around 
us  hide  from  view  ;  and  we  are  but  lost  in  the  expanded 
universe,  if  we  apply  to  it  only  the  rude  and  petty  measures 
hung  up  in  the  monkish  cell.  In  the  courses  of  history,  be 
it  remembered,  there  are  two  agencies  ever  at  work, — the 
perfection  of  God,  and  the  imperfection  of  man  ;  and  the 
present  in  which  we  live  is  the  result  of  both.  How,  then, 
shall  we  separate  the  divine  from  the  undivine  ?  How  dis- 
charge the  perishable  fancy,  and  hold  fast  only  to  the  eternal 
realit}'?  What  sacred  authority  shall  stand  for  us  in  the 
field  of  thought,  and  divide  between  the  living  and  the  dead  ? 
To  answer  this  question  properly,  we  must  ask  another. 
The  two  elements  in  our  religious  inheritance,  the  divine 
and  the  human — are  they  likely  to  be  blended  and  interfused 
throughout,  so  that  the  criterion  which  shall  sunder  them  is 
needed  everywhere  ?  or  do  they  sit  apart,  though  on  the  same 
field, — the  one  railed  off  within  some  sacred  enclosure ;  the 
other  poured  around  it,  and  hiding  it  from  view,  and  here  and 
there  assuming  its  likeness,  but  never  mingling  with  its  living 
power.  Surely  we  should  naturally  expect  that  whatever 
divine  influences  have  been  shed  upon  the  world  must  freely 
spread  through  the  recipient  capacity  of  our  humanity,  act  in 
its  functions,  and  share  its  risks.  In  nature  there  is  no  force 
but  God's  ;  in  conscience  yet  unspoiled,  there  is  no  light  save 
his  ;  but  it  is  the  specialty  of  history,  that  there  he  concedes 
to  man  a  partnership  with  himself,  and  lets  everything  arise 
from  the  confluence  or  the  conflict  of  both  wills.     It  seems. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  129 

therefore,  hardly  conceivaljle  that  an  historical  revelation 
should  be  pure  and  simple,  even  for  an  hour.  IMingling  with 
human  faculties  in  the  first  soul  it  enters,  taking  the  vehicle 
of  human  language  in  passing  from  mind  to  mind,  committed 
to  the  custody  of  human  tradition  in  surviving  from  age  to 
age,  drawn  into  the  intensest  ferment  of  human  thought,  and 
struggling  through  the  seething  deep  of  human  passion,  and 
guarded  from  change,  if  at  all,  only  by  the  crystallized  im- 
perfection of  human  institutions,  it  becomes  more  closely  in- 
terwoven with  the  liabilities  of  our  life  at  every  point,  till  you 
can  no  more  withdraw  the  supernatural  from  the  natural  than 
you  can  distinguish  in  the  tree  the  cells  formed  in  a  spring 
shower  a  hundred  years  ago.  If  it  be  so  ;  if,  to  borrow  the 
Scripture  image,  the  sacred  leaven  diffuses  itself  thus  through 
the  whole  mass  of  our  humanit}',  and  in  quickening  our  nature 
is  dissolved  into  it, — then  there  remains  no  rule  for  separating 
what  is  divine  and  authoritative,  except  the  tests  by  which,  in 
moral  and  spiritual  things,  we  know  the  true  from  the  false, 
the  holy  from  the  unhol}'.  External  criteria, — that  is,  un- 
moral rules  for  finding  moral  things,  i^hifsical  rules  for  finding 
spiritual  things, — there  can  be  none.  Eeason  for  the  rational, 
conscience  for  the  right — these  are  the  sole  organs  for  appre- 
ciating the  last  claims  upon  us,  the  courts  of  ultimate  appeal, 
whose  verdict  it  is  not  only  weakness,  but  treason  to  resist. 

This  close  intertexture,  however,  of  the  human  and  the 
divine  in  our  historical  inheritance  of  religion  is  by  no  means 
admitted  by  its  chief  trustees.  They  are  possessed  with  the 
idea  that  they  have  actually  got  divine  truth  enclosed  within 
a  ring-fence,  still  pure  and  integral  after  all  these  ages, — a 
paradise  of  God,  where  his  voice  is  heard,  and  his  presence  is 
fe).t,  planted  amid  the  profane  wilds  around.  Two  claims  are 
preferred  to  this  exceptional  position, — one  by  Catholics  on 
behalf  of  "  the  Church  ;  "  the  other  by  Protestants,  en  behalf 
of  "  the  Bible."  They  agree  in  assigning  to  something  out- 
ward an  authority  before  which  the  inward  protest  of  even 
our  highest  faculties  must  sink  in  silence  :  they  differ  in  attri- 
buting this  authority  to  a  (■(irjxyrafidn  in  the  one  case,  to  a 
literature  in  the  other.  In  the  latter  case,  the  Holy  Spirit, 
having  once  created  the  books  of  Scripture,  remains,  as  it 

E 


I30  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

were,  stereotyped  there,  and  liable  to  all  the  disadvantages 
which  Plato  charges  upon  written  language, — that,  though  you 
would  think  the  page  alive  with  the  thoughts  it  has,  it  looks 
up  at  you  always  with  the  same  face  ;  is  dumb  to  the  ques- 
tions you  ask  ;  and,  if  tossed  about  in  contumely  or  mistake, 
cannot  defend  itself,  but  needs  its  father  to  help  it.*  In  the 
former  case,  the  Holy  Spirit  perpetuates  its  work  by  taking 
for  its  organ  an  ever-living  hierarchy,  which  is  there  to  speak 
in  every  age,  to  interpret  and  supplement  the  dubious  text, 
to  correct  the  aberrations  of  reason,  and  relieve  the  perplexities 
of  conscience.  To  this  Catholic  theory  let  us  first  turn  ;  the 
more  so,  because,  to  punish  our  imperfect  exorcism  of  evil 
spirits  at  the  Eeformation,  it  is  fast  returning  from  the  dry 
places  of  controversy  in  which  it  could  never  rest,  and,  finding 
in  many  minds  the  mediaeval  chamber  swept  and  garnished, 
enters  in  to  resume  possession. 

The  Church  then  is,  in  this  view,  not  simply  a  divine 
establishment  historically  continued  in  the  administration  of 
certain  original  trusts,  but  a  living  body,  permanently  and 
for  ever  animated  by  the  Third  Person  in  the  Trinity,  who, 
since  the  day  of  Pentecost,  has  occupied  this  organism,  just  as 
the  Second  Person  was  united  with  the  humanity  of  Jesus. 
And  if,  in  this  case  too,  we  do  not  speak,  as  in  his,  of  an  in- 
carnation, it  is  not  because  the  divine  embodiment  is  less 
assured,  but  because  the  human  persons  are  many  and  suc- 
cessive, and  the  body  is  corporate.  The  Holy  Spirit  had  ni 
all  times,  and  even  in  heathen  nations,  been  the  secret  source 
of  natural  grace,  and  rational  apprehension  of  divine  things  ; 
and  has  enabled  men  to  know  God  as  the  Author  of  Nature, 
to  feel  him  in  the  suspicions  of  conscience,  and  to  knit  society 
together  by  his  laws.  All  this,  however,  was  but  an  invisible 
and  scattered  influence,  present  everywhere,  instituted  no- 
where. But  now,  having  created  on  earth  the  mystical  body 
of  the  Christ  in  heaven,  the  Holy  Spirit  has  opened  a  special 
abode,  and  established  an  organized  and  visible  agency  for 
distributing  a  higher  and  supernatural  order  of  grace.  His 
presence,  no  longer  contingent  on  individual  fidelity,  has  be- 
come unconditional  and  constant,  and — whether  by  diffusing 

*  Phsedrus,  275  ad  fin. 


Chap.  I.]         THE    CATHOLICS   AND    THE    CHURCH.  131 

the  light  of  the  incarnation,  or  by  the  consecrating  power  oi 
the  seven  sacraments,  or  l^y  gifts  of  vision,  prophecy,  or 
miracle,  or  by  the  efficacy  of  preaching — continues  the  cha- 
racteristics of  the  first  age,  undiminished  to  the  last.  If  you 
ask  how  you  are  to  know,  when  you  see  it,  this  field  cf  sacred 
wonders,  crowded  with  daily  miracles,  a  perfectly  definite 
answer  is  immediately  given, — there  are /o/(r  divine  marks,  or 
"  notes,''  which  make  any  mistake  of  the  true  Church  of  God 
impossible ;  viz.,  its  Unitij,  or  identity  in  all  times ;  its 
Sanctity,  as  the  one  home  of  holy  men  ;  its  Universality,  or 
identity  in  all  places  ;  and  its  Apostolicity,  or  exact  reproduc- 
tion of  the  first  and  model  age.  Visibly  bearing  these  char- 
acteristics, the  Catholic  Church  claims  to  be  the  exclusive 
trustee  of  revelation,  the  sole  channel  of  supernatural  grace, 
the  infallible  witness  and  interpreter  of  divine  truth. 

That  so  stupendous  a  claim  should  appeal  to  tests  so  in- 
adequate would  be  impossible,  were  it  not  that  it  has  had  to 
confront  nothing  but  pretension  weaker  than  itself,  and  already 
pledged  to  its  most  vulnerable  premisses.  If  we  take  for 
granted,  that,  somewhere  upon  earth,  there  nnist  be  a  divine 
institute,  and  only  one,  for  the  distribution  of  grace  and  the 
organization  of  true  dogma  ;  and  if  the  only  question  be, 
whether  what  we  find  at  Lambeth,  at  Geneva,  or  at  Eome, 
looks  most  like  this  long-lived  and  world-wide  establishment, 
— these  "  notes  "  serve  readily  enough  to  pick  out  the  Catholic 
Church  ;  being,  in  fact,  invented  for  this  very  purpose.  As 
between  different  pretenders  to  the  same  ideal,  they  may  be 
conclusive.  But  if  we  dismiss  that  ideal  assumption,  and  look 
first  at  what  is  real ;  if  we  relieve  the  Church  of  her  rivals, 
and  ask  her  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  and  speak  to  us  from 
the  primitive  ground  of  humanity  alone, — then  we  shall  need 
other  marks  than  these  to  convince  us  that  there  is  nothing 
divinsr  upon  earth  than  a  spiritual  corpor^iion  which  can 
have  a  Borgia  for  its  head,  the  councils  of  Ephesus  and 
Constance  fcr  boards  of  justice,  and  the  index  and  encyclicals 
as  its  expressions  of  pastoral  wisdom.  Nor  is  it  dilficult  to 
say  what  the  other  tests  should  l)e  to  which  the  issue  should 
be  brought.  In  reasoning  with  the  Catholic,  we  have  always 
this  advantage,  that  he  admits  a  natural  reason,  a  natural 

K  2 


132  A  UTHORl  TY  AR  TIFICIA  LL  V  M ISP  LA  CED.    [  Book  1 1. 

conscience,  a  natural  religion ;  nay,  that  the  light  which  we 
have  through  them  is  a  grace  of  the  same  Holy  Spirit  which 
makes  his  Church  the  depository  of  higher,  hut  homogeneous 
gifts,  ^^lien,  then,  from  my  prior  ground  of  Nature,  I 
approach  the  reputed  enclosure  of  supernatural  grace,  what 
vestiges  of  its  divine  character  shall  I  inevitably  seek  ?  None 
other  than  I  have  learned  already,  and  seen  gleaming  through 
the  minds  and  characters  of  noble  personalities,  and  from 
the  answer  of  conscience  known  to  be  given  me  from  above, 
truth,  justice,  pity,  purity,  and  self-sacrifice ;  and,  in  the 
reputed  supernatural  order,  I  can  acknowledge  nothing  which 
contradicts  these  revelations  of  the  natural  order.  If  one  and 
the  same  spirit  is  the  living  breath  of  both  fields,  there  can 
be  no  change  of  moral  atmosphere  on  crossing  the  boundary  : 
the  light  must  be  akin  in  both,  refracted  by  the  same  media, 
and  flinging  the  same  tender  tints,  and  differing  only  in 
clearness  and  intensity.  By  this  criterion,  then,  of  moral 
reason  and  conscience,  let  us  try  the  validity  of  these 
'•  notes  "  of  a  divine  institute,  secured  from  human  contami- 
nation. 

1.  The  UNITY  of  the  Church  throughout  all  time  owes  its 
effect  on  the  imagination  to  the  contrast  it  seems  to  present 
with  the  endless  variations  of  human  opinion,  especially  in 
the  regions  of  higher  speculation.  \Vliile  the  ambitious 
intellect  has  been  visited  by  a  thousand  perishable  dreams, 
and  has  constructed  worlds  out  of  the  frostwork  on  its 
windows  till  the  next  sunshine  melted  them  away;  while 
philosophies  and  heresies  without  number  have  put  forth 
their  gaudy  blossom  in  the  morning,  and  withered  before 
night,— the  one  thing  that  has  been  patient  through  it  all, 
and  unchanged  alike  by  fancy  or  by  force,  has  been,  it  is  said, 
the  teaching  and  worship  of  the  Church.  The  very  creeds 
that  are  on  the  lips  today,  the  very  prayers  that  take  up  the 
yearnings  of  the  heart,  have  been  charged  with  the  faith  and 
piety  of  Ambrose  and  Chrysostom,  of  Benedict  and  St.  Francis, 
of  Alcuin  and  Bernard.  This  persistency,  it  is  urged,  belongs 
to  the  immutability  of  God,  and  shows  that  we  are  here 
within  the  compass  of  the  divine  thought,  which  has  no 
shadow  of  turning  ;  not  of  the  human,  which  is  as  the  passing 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND   THE   CHURCH.  133 

cloud.       "In    the   unity   of    the   Church's    doctnnes,"    says 
Bahnez,  "  pervadmg  as  it  does  all  her  instructions,  and  the 
number  of  great  minds  which  this  unity  has  always  enclosed 
within  her  bosom,  we  find  a  phenomenon  so  extraordinary, 
that  its  equal  cannot  be  found  elsewhere,  and  that  no  effort  of 
reason  can  explain  it  according  to  the  natural  order  of  human 
things.     It  is  certainly  not  new  in  the  history  of  the  hiunan 
mind  for  a  doctrine,  more  or  less  reasonable,  for  a  thne  to  be 
professed  by  a  certain   number   of  learned  and  enlightened 
men :  this   has   been    shown   in    schools   of  philosophy  both 
ancient  and  modern.     But  for  a  creed  to  maintain  itself  for 
many  ages  by  preserving  the  adhesion  of  men  of  learning  of 
all    times   and  of  all  countries — of  minds  differing  amongst 
each  other  on  other  points  ;  of  men  opposed  in  interests  and 
divided  by  rivalries — is  a  phenomenon  new,  unique,  and  not  to 
be  found  anywhere  but  in  the  Catholic  Church.     It  has  always 
been  and  still  is  the  practice  of  the  Church,  Avhile  one  in  faith 
and  doctrine,  to  teach  unceasingly  ;  to  excite  discussion  on 
all  subjects  ;  to  promote  the  study  and  examination  of  the 
foundations  on   which  faith   itself  reposes ;  to  scrutinize  for 
this  purpose   the   ancient   languages,  the  monuments  of  the 
remotest  times,  the  documents  of  history,  the  discoveries  of 
scientific  observation,  the  lessons   of  the   highest  and  most 
analytical  sciences ;  and  to  present  herself  with  a  generous 
confidence   in    the   great   lyceums,    where   men   replete  with 
talents  and  knowledge  concentrate,  as  in  a  focus,  all  that  they 
have   learned    from    their    predecessors,    and   all   that   they 
themselves   have   collected :    and   nevertheless    we    see    her 
always  persevere  with  firmness  in  her  faith  and  the  unity  of 
her  doctrines ;  we  see  her  always   surrounded  l)y  illustrious 
men,  who,  with  their  brows  crowned  with    the  laurels  of  a 
hundred  literary  contests,   humble  themselves,  tranquil  and 
serene,  before  her,  without  fear  of  dimming  tlie  brightness  of 
the  glory  which  surrounds  their  heads."* 

Before  accepting  the  challenge  to  account  for  this  magnifi- 
cent prodigy,   we  must  first   assure  ourselves  of  its  reality, 

*  Protestautism  aud  Catholicity  compared.  Written  iu  Spanish  by  J. 
Bahnez.  Translated  from  the  French  by  C.  J.  Hanford  and  H.  Kersliaw. 
London  :  1849.    P.  13. 


134  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

and,  if  it  exists,  must  measure   its   amount.     That  through 
the  life  of  the  Church  there  has  persisted  a  certain  common 
essence  of  sentiment,  never  lost  amid  secondary  changes,  and 
that  to  this  common  essence  is  due  the  allegiance  of  great  and 
good  minds  to  Christianity,   is  beyond  doubt ;  but  ^Yith  this 
central  genius  of  the  religion  to  identify  the  characteristics  of 
the  Romish  Church,  as  if  they  were  its  equivalent  in  perma- 
nence and  power,  is  to  contradict  the  whole  course  of  Christian 
history.     If  Clement  of  Rome  could  be  called  to  the  scene  of 
his  labours,  and  placed  before  the  high   altar  of  St.  Peter's 
to-day,  do  you  think  he  would  find  himself  at  home,  and  know 
when  to  kneel,  and  when  to   bow,  or  even   dimly  guess  the 
meaning  of  it  all "?     Or  if,  before  Clement  of  Alexandria  you 
could  lay  the  Tridentine  Decrees,  would  they  so  speak  to  his 
habitual  thought  and  faith,  that  you  could  count  on  his  signing 
them  with  joyful  assent  ?     Notoriously  there  is  neither  dogma 
nor  rite  in  the  system  of  the  Church,  which  has  not  a  long 
history  to  tell  of  its  growth  into  settled  form.     It  took  two 
centuries  and  a  half  to  determine  the  relation  of  the  Son  of 
God  to  the  Father  ;  nor  will  any  one  who   is  even  slightly 
acquainted    with     the    ante-Nicene    literature    affirm    that 
Athanasius    would    have   been   content    with   the   doctrinal 
professions  of  Justin  Martyr,  Irenasus,  and  Tertullian  ;  all  of 
whom,  in  their  "  economy  "    of   the   divine  nature,  distinctly 
subordinated  the  Second  Member  of  the  Trinity  to  the  First. 
For   three   centuries   more,    it   remained   unsettled    whether 
Christ  had  more  than  one  nature  and  one  will ;  the  forces  of 
opinion  swaying  to  and  fro  for  generations  before  a  predomi- 
nance was  won,  and  opposition  driven  from  the  field.     How 
little  concord  had  been  reached  respecting  the  Third  Person 
of  the  Trinity,  more  than  fifty   years   after  the  Council  of 
Nicsea,  Gregory  Nazianzen  tells  us  in  these  words  :  "  Of  our 
thoughtful  men,  some  regard  the  Holy  Spirit  as  an  operation, 
some  as  a  creature,  some  as  God  ;  while  others  are  at  a  loss 
to  decide,  seeing  that   Scripture  determines  nothing  on  the 
subject."*     A  year  later,  the  bare  phrase  of  the  original  Nicene 
Creed,  "  I  believe   in   the  Holy  Ghost,"  was   enriched  at  the 
Council  of  Constantinople  by  the  added  attributes,  "the  Lord, 

*  Oratio  38  :  De  Spiritu  Saucto.     Gr.  :  1555  (written  about  a.d.  380). 


Clwp.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  135 

the  Giver  of  life,  that  proceedeth  from  the  Father  ;  that  ^Yith 
the  Father  and  the  Son  is  worshipped  and  glorified  ;  that 
spake  by  the  prophets  ;  "  and  not  till  the  year  589,*  and  then 
only  in  Spain,  was  the  recital  introduced,  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
proceeded  from  the  Son  as  well  as  from  the  Father. 

Similarly,  only  for  a  far  longer  time,  did  the  conception  of 
Christ's  redemption  remain  indeterminate  and  variable  ;  so 
that,  even  as  late  as  the  time  of  Anselm  (who  died  1109),  it 
entered  upon  a  new  stadium  of  its  history,  and  lost  the 
characteristic  features  of  its  patristic  prototype.  In  both 
doctrines,  indeed,  it  was  taught  that  Christ  had  paid  the 
ransom  which  rescued  men  from  the  powers  of  hell ;  but, 
when  we  ask  to  n-liom  he  had  paid  it,  Irenaus  and  Origen, 
Augustine  and  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  repl}',  that  it  was  paid  to 
the  Devil,  who,  by  his  successful  offer  of  temptations,  had 
become  absolute  proprietor  of  men,  but  who  forfeited  his  right 
by  being  himself  tempted  to  put  to  death  the  sinless  Son  of 
God,  and,  having  fallen  into  this  trap,  was  obliged  to  sur- 
render his  spoil. t 

"  At  the  third  syuod  of  Toledo,  held  on  the  couversiou  of  the  Visigoth 
Kiug  Recared  from  the  Ariau  to  the  Catholic  Church.  Couc.  omu.  Coll., 
torn.  xiii.  p.  lOG,  scq. 

t  Irenaeus  adversus  User.,  V.  xxi.  3.  C4rabe,  1702,  p.  433.  "  Quoniam  in 
initio  homini  suasit  (i.e.,  AjDostata)  transgredi  pra^ceptum  Factoris,  ideo  euni 
habuit  in  .sua  potestate."  Comp.  V.  i.  1,  p.  393.  "  Potens  in  omnibus  Dei 
Verbum  et  non  deficieus  in  sua  justitia,  juste  etiam  adversus  ipsam  conversus 
est  apostasiani,  ea  qu£e  sunt  sua  redimcns  ab  ea,  non  cum  vi,  quemadmodum 
ilia  initio  domiuabatur  nostri,  ea  quae  non  erant  sua  iusatiabilitcr  rapicns, 
sed  secundmn  suadelam,  quemadmodum  decebat  Deum  suadentem  et  nou 
vim  inferentem,  accipere  quse  vellet,  ut  neque  quod  est  justum  coufringeretur, 
neque  antiqua  plasmatio  Dei  deperiret." 

Orig.  in  Epi.st.  ad  Rom.  ii.  13.  Lommetzsch,  tom.  vi.  p.  1.39.  "  '  Redemi^ti 
sumus  non  corruptibili  pretio  argcnti  et  auro,  sed  pretioso  sanguine  '  Uni- 
geniti.  Si  ergo  '  pretio  empti  '  sumus,  ut  etiam  Paulus  adstipulatur,  ab 
aliquo  sine  dubio  empti  sumus  cujus  cramus  scrvi,  qui  et  prctium  poposcit 
quod  voluit,  ut  do  potestate  dimittcrct  quos  tenebat.  Tenebat  autem  nos 
Diabolus,  cui  distracti  fueramus  peccatis  uostris.  Poi^oscit  ergo  pretium 
nostrum  sanguinem  Christi,  .  .  .  qui  tam  pretiosus  fuit  ut  solus  pro  omnium 
redemptions  sufficeret." 

When  the  transaction  is  thus  conceived  as  a  recovery  from  Satan  of  a  pos- 
session to  which  he  had  a  legal  right,  it  is  easy  to  understand  tlie  stress  which 
is  laid  on  God's  having  managed  it  without  "violation  of  Jjistice;  "  i.e.,  in- 
stead of  arbitrarily  using  the  power  of  a  superior,  he  proceeds  juridically, 
and,  keeping  within  the  terms  of  the  contract,  did  the  Devil  no  ivrong,  taking 
no  sinner  out  of  his  hands  till  he  himself  had  gone  beyond  his  bargain,  and 


136  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Anselm,  on  the  other  hand,  clenymg  the  Devil's  claim 
altogether,  transfers  the  debt  to  the  righteousness  of  God,  to 
which,  he  contends,  the  sacrifice  of  Calvary  renders  more 
than  an  equivalent  for  the  sins  of  men.*  While  the  later 
doctrine  superseded  the  earlier,  it  could  not  secure  its  own 
position,  but  served  as  the  starting-point  of  a  new  polemic, 
in  which  Abelard,  Duns  Scotus,  and  Thomas  Aquinas  appear 
on  opposite  sides. 

JNo  part  of  the  Church  system  carries  more  definite  pre- 
tensions to  a  supernatural  character  than  its  group  of  sacra- 
ments. They  are  its  instituted  vehicles  of  grace,  or  securities 
from  sin,  intrusted  to  the  charge  of  its  consecrated  ministers, 
and  withheld  from  the  people  only  at  the  peril  of  their  salva- 
tion. Yet  their  number,  their  mode  of  administration,  nay, 
their  very  idea,  remained  undetermined  for  more  than  a 
millennium ;  and  first  attain  to  some  exactitude  in  the  hands 
of  Peter  Lombard.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  earliest  and 
least  disputed  of  the  Christian  rites,  a  different  construction 
was  put  upon  its  very  essence  after  eight  centuries  of  usage. 

made  the  mistake  of  passing  death  upon  the  sinless.  What  these  theolo- 
gians admire  is,  that,  even  to  the  Devil,  God  was  just,  and  observed  fair  play, 
— a  position  very  different  from  the  modern  thesis,  that,  in  the  incidence  of 
penalty  on  the  innocent  in  place  of  the  guilty,  there  is  no  infringement  of 
ideal  justice.  August,  de  lib.  arbitr.  iii.  10,  ad  init.  "  Servata  est  in  peccato 
justitia  Dei  punientis.  Nam  et  illud  appeusum  est  tequitatis  examine,  ut 
nee  ipsius  diaboli  potestati  negaretur  homo,  quern  sibi  male  suadendo  sub- 
jecerat.  luiquum  enim  erat  ut  ei  quern  ceperat  non  dominaretur.  Nee  fieri 
ullo  modo  potest,  ut  Dei  summi  et  veri  perfecta  justitia,  quae  usquequaque 
pertenditur,  deserat  etiam  ordinandas  ruinas  peccantimn.  .  .  .  Verbum  Dei, 
Unicus  Dei  filius,  Diabolum, — quem  semper  sub  legibus  suis  habuit,  — homine 
indutus  etiam  homini  subjugavit,  nihil  ei  extorquens  violento  dominatu,  sed 
super ans  emn  lege  justitife." 

The  device  by  which  Satan  was  caught,  viz.,  the  disguise  of  a  divine  and 
sinless  nature  under  human  form,  is  praised  as  a  successful  stratagenr  or 
trick.  •' 'ATraTOTat  Kai  niros  rw  To{5  nvQpanov  npoffKyjfiaTi.''  says  Gregory  of 
Nyssa,  "  6  TrpoanciTTjaas  tov  uvOpconov  to*  ttjs  T]8oyrjs  SeXeatryLtan."'  Orat. 
Catech.  c.  26.  Tom.  iv.  p.  84.  Paris:  Morell.  1638.  "  Oportuit  banc 
fraudem  Diabolo  fieri,  ut  susciperet  corpus  Dominus  Jesus,"  says  Ambrose, 
Expos,  in  Evang.  Luc.  lib.  iv.  ad  Luke  iv.  1. 

*  Cur  Deus  homo,  ii.  20.  "  Quid  misericordius  intelligi  valet,  quam  cum 
peccatori  tormentis  seternis  damnato  et  unde  se  redimat  non  habenti  Deus 
pater  dicit,  Accipe  Unigenitum  meum  et  da  pro  te  ;  et  ipse  filius,  Tolle  me 
et  redime  te  ?  Quid  justius,  quam  ut  ille  cui  datur  pretium  majus  omni 
debito,  si  debito  datur  aSectu,  dimittat  omne  debitum  ?  " 


Chap.  I.]         THE    CATHOLICS  AND    THE    CHURCH.  137 

Pope  Zachary  had  declared  (about  742)  an  invocation  of  the 
Trinity  essential  to  its  validity.*  But,  when  the  difticult  task 
of  converting  and  baptizing  the  Bulgarians  had  to  be  accom- 
plished, Pope  Nicolas  I.  (a.d.  858-8G7)  waived  this  condition, 
and  pronounced  baptism  in  the  name  of  Christ  to  be  sufficient. f 
In  John  of  Damascus  (in  the  first  half  of  the  eighth  century) 
we  find  but  the  two  Protestant  sacraments  ;  in  the  Dionysian 
books,  probably  belonging  to  the  same  century,  there  are  six ; 
and  in  a  similar  enumeration  a  little  later,  Theodore  Studita 
gives  a  sacramental  place  to  monkish  vows. 

These  facts  are  but  samples  of  endless  variations,  consti- 
tuting in  their  succession  the  very  substance  of  ecclesiastical 
history.  So  undeniable  are  they,  that,  to  cover  them  and 
take  them  up  into  its  adoption,  the  Church  has  invented  its 
theory  of  "  development,"  according  to  which  the  ever-living 
oracle  reserves  its  judgment  upon  a  doctrine  till  the  contra- 
dictions and  controversies  of  men  require  that  the  truth  should 
be  rescued  from  peril,  and  planted  among  sacred  things  :  so 
that  there  is,  for  each  dogma,  a  period  when  it  is  emerging 
from  its  germ,  and  throwing  out  its  life  in  tentative  forms. 
And  only  when,  at  last,  it  has  struggled  into  the  explicit 
thought  of  Christendom,  does  the  divine  interpreter  define 
the  form  in  which  it  is  to  set.  Thenceforth  nothing  but  unity 
is  found.  If  this  be  so,  then  the  life  of  each  doctrine  is 
sharply  divided  into  two  periods  by  the  verdict  of  the  Church, 
lying  freely  open  to  doubt  and  variation  prior  to  that  verdict, 
but,  from  the  moment  when  the  judge  has  spoken,  closed 
against  the  interrogating  intellect,  and  registered  among  the 
conditions  of  salvation.  Living  in  the  former  period,  you 
may  go  wrong  without  oftence ;  living  in  the  latter,  your 
heterodoxy  is  perdition  :  under  the  very  same  conditions  of 
thought,  your  relations  to  God  are  inverted.     The  definitions 

*  "  Quicumquc  sine  invocatione  Trinitatis  lotus  fuisset  sacrameutum  re- 
geucrationis  nou  haberet.  Quod  omnibus  verum  est,"  etc.  Epist.  x.  Coucil. 
omu.  Collectio  Ilegia.     Paris :  1643.     Tom.  17,  p.  393. 

t  "  Hi  profecto  si  in  nomine  sancta;  Trinitatis,  vel  tautum  in  nomine 
Christi,  sicut  in  Act.  Apost.  egimus,  baptizati  sunt  (unmn  quippc  idemque 
est,  ut  sanctus  exponit  Ambrosius)  constat  eos  non  esse  deuuo  baptizandos." 
Responsa  ad  consulta  Bulgar.,  c.  104.  Sacros.  Coucil.  Labbe.,  torn.  viii. 
p.  548. 


138  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

of  the  Church  have  thus  the  effect,  not  of  smiply  cleclarmg, 
but  of  constantly  altering,  the  terms  of  acceptance  with  God  : 
and  if,  being  in  error,  you  die  the  day  before  a  Vatican  decree, 
you  may  pass  to  the  seats  of  the  blessed  ;  if  the  day  after, 
you  join  the  Devil  and  his  angels. 

And  what  becomes  of  the  imposing  unity  of  the  faith,  Avhen 
thus  interpreted '?  It  is  limited  to  the  second  and  post- 
decretal  period  of  every  doctrine.  It  is  not  the  permanent 
fact  pervading  the  religious  thought  of  the  faithful,  but  only 
the  ultimate  ratio  in  which  their  divergences  resolve  them- 
selves ;  not  the  continuous  life  of  their  waking  mind,  but  the 
terminus  ad  quern  they  work  and  tend,  and  where  at  last  they 
rest  and  sleep.  It  has  been  sometimes  objected  to  the 
political  economists,  that  they  are  so  engaged  in  tracing  to 
the  last  results  the  laws  which  they  investigate,  as  to  forget 
how  long  is  the  road  thither,  and  how  brief  the  pause  there. 
They  point  to  certain  movements  of  profits  towards  the  same 
level,  to  the  equalization  of  wages  by  free  distribution  of 
labour,  to  the  Ijenefits  of  machinery  in  cheapening  produc- 
tion, and  enlarging  the  employment-fund,  but,  in  contem- 
plating these  futurities,  hardly  remember  that  they  are  in 
"no  man's  land;"  that  the  actual  life  of  generation  after 
generation  is  spent  in  approximating  towards  them ;  and 
that  meanwhile  the  mixed  conditions  of  a  process  of  transi- 
tion may  fill  the  present  with  struggle  and  suffering.  A 
similar  remark  may  be  applied  to  the  Catholic  Unity :  it  is 
an  ideal  tendency  forever  approached,  but  in  no  full  sense 
historically  reached.  However  many  theological  points  have 
been  professedly^  settled,  every  age  that  was  not  dead  asleep 
has  teemed  with  controversy  ;  and  all  that  is  intellectually 
great  and  morally  noble  in  the  past  life  of  Christendom — 
its  richest  literature,  its  finest  humanit}^  its  truest  saints — 
will  l)e  found  in  connection  with  the  growth  rather  than  the 
definition  of  faith  ;  not  in  the  stationary,  but  in  the  moving 
periods. 

Still  it  will  be  said,  "  The  post-decretal  unity  seems  indis- 
putable :  however  energetic  the  previous  strife,  it  sinks  to 
j)erfect  peace  when  judgment  has  once  been  given."  This 
assertion  it  was  difficult  to  test  so  long  as  the  precise  seat  of 


Chap,  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  139 

judicial  authority  in  matters  of  doctrine  was  undefined;  for 
it  was  easy  to  discover  that  there  were  flaws  in  every  decree 
which  failed  to  bring  the  required  unanimity,  and  to  disavow 
it  as  not  duly  ratified.  Now  that  the  once  floating  and  dis- 
tributed infallil)ility  is  concentrated  on  the  popes,  as  their 
personal  and  official  attribute,  we  have  to  look  no  farther  for 
the  divine  unity  of  the  Church  than  to  their  decisions,  form- 
ally pronounced  in  the  exercise  of  their  teaching  and  magis- 
terial functions  ;  and  the  phenomenon  which  is  claimed  is 
neither  more  nor  less  than  an  entire  consistency,  pervading 
the  whole  series  of  Papal  edicts  on  matters  of  faith  and 
morals.  That  this  claim  is  totally  inadmissible  will  appear 
from  a  recital  of  a  few  well-attested  facts. 

During  the  reign  of  Justinian  (a.d.  527-565),  both  the 
Court  and  the  Church  were  violently  agitated  by  disputes 
respecting  the  union  and  the  distinction  of  the  divine  and  the 
human  constituents  in  the  person  of  Christ.  The  extremes 
were  marked,  on  the  one  hand,  by  the  name  of  Apollinaris 
(Bishop  of  Laodicffia,  about  a.d.  362),  who  so  intimately 
blended  the  two  as  to  suppose  them  eternally  one,  and  to 
believe  that  the  Son  of  God,  instead  of  being  incarnate  first 
on  earth,  already  brought  his  humanity  with  him  from 
heaven  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  by  the  name  of  Nestorius 
(Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  a.d.  428),  who  so  discrmiinated 
the  two  as  to  hold  them  in  co-existence  without  sharing  the 
same  predicates,  and,  in  particular,  to  deny  that  Mary  could 
properly  be  called  the  mother  of  God  (ceotokoc).  The  opposite 
opinions  not  only  separated  individual  Christians,  but  gave 
a  party-colouring  to  the  very  map  of  the  empire  ;  the  Egyp- 
tians and  their  Palestinian  neighbours,  where  chiefly  the 
mystic  and  eremite  life  was  fostered,  inclining  to  the  former, 
i.e.,  the  monoplijisltc  doctrine  ;  while  the  patriarchate  ot 
Antioch  in  the  East,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  West,  though 
not  shrinking  from  the  phrase  "  mother  of  God,"  sharply 
distinguished  the  two  natures  united  in  Christ.  Through  the 
usual  tendency  of  such  subtle  disputes  to  win  for  themselves 
some  human  interest  by  concentrating  the  quarrel  on  personal 
representatives,  the  monophy sites  in  Justinian's  time  set  their 
hearts    on    condemning    by   authoritative    anathema    three 


I40  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Syrian  theologians, — Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  who  had  been 
the  teacher  of  Nestorius  ;  Theodoret,  Bishop  of  Cyrus,  who 
had  written  against  Cyril,  the  great  champion  of  the  other 
side ;  and  Ibas,  presbyter  in  Edessa,  who  also  had  censured 
the  doctrine,  and  questioned  the  consistency,  of  Cyril.  It  so 
happened,  however,  that,  in  the  minutes  of  the  fourth 
ecumenical  council  at  Chalcedon  (a.d.  451),  there  were  resolu- 
tions on  three  articles  (cajntida)*  recognizing  the  orthodoxy 
of  those  writers,  and  reinstating  the  two  survivors  of  them  in 
their  ecclesiastical  offices  ;  so  that  the  proposal  to  condemn 
them  was  a  proposal  to  rescind  the  acts  of  an  authority 
regarded  as  supreme. 

In  this  controversy  of  the  "  three  chapters,"  as  it  was 
called.  Pope  Vigilius  was  exposed,  on  the  human  side,  to  con- 
flicting influences.  He  owed  his  primacy  to  the  Empress 
Theodora,  and  was  pledged  to  her  monophysite  fanaticism. 
He  was  at  the  head  of  a  clergy  resolute  to  uphold  the  Council 
of  Chalcedon,  and  was  himself  in  sympathy  with  their  zeal. 
He  was  in  the  power,  and  for  six  years  was  virtually  the 
prisoner,  at  Constantinople,  of  the  emperor,  intent  on  repeal- 
ing the  three  articles  without  further  disturbance  to  the 
authority  of  the  council.  Whether  he  had  guidance  enough, 
on  the  divine  side,  to  steady  him  amid  these  deflecting  forces, 
and  hold  him  to  the  simple  line  of  truth,  we  may  estimate  by 
the  following  facts.  In  the  autumn  of  a.d.  540,  he  professed 
his  adherence  to  the  fourth  as  to  the  previous  councils,  and 
his  concurrence  in  the  anathema  of  the  Eastern  patriarch 
against  the  monophy sites. t  In  a  letter  to  the  empress, 
written  in  544,  he  avows  himself  a  monophysite.  t  But  when 
an  imperial  edict,  in  the  same  year,  condemned  the  three 
articles  of  Chalcedon,  and  Yigilius  was  summoned  to  Con- 
stantinople to  give  it  his  support,  he  abides  by  his  first  pro- 
fession, and  through  547  persists  in  his  refusal. §  Next  year, 
however,  he  formally  pronounces  against  them  in  a  document, 
— his  "  Judicatum," — signed  by  himself  and  several  bishops 

*  Concil.  Geuer.  Eccl.  Catli.,  torn.  ii.  Rom. :  1G28.     Act  S,  9,  10,  p.  344, 
seqq. 

t  Epp.  4,  5.     Concil.  omn.  Coll.,  torn.  xi.  p.  514,  seqq. 

t  Breviarimn  Liberati,  cxxii.     Concil.  omn.  Coll.,  torn.  xii.  p.  490. 

§  Sacrosancta  Concil.     Labbe.,  torn.  v.  p.  323.     Nota  Sev.  Bin. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  141 

assembled  at  Constantinople.*  The  obedience  of  the  West 
being  still  unsecured,  Justinian  issued  in  551  a  second  edict, 
renewing  the  condemnation  of  the  three  articles.!  Yigilius 
no^y  declines  once  more  to  join  in  the  condemnation,  not  onlj' 
^Yhen  it  proceeds  from  the  emperor  alone,  but  also  when,  in 
653,  it  is  confirmed  by  the  fifth  ecumenical  council  at  Con- 
stantinople. Nay,  he  defends  the  capitnla  in  a  special  mani- 
festo, his  "  Constitiitiiiu  ad  Imijeratorcm,''  bearing  with  his 
own  the  signatures  of  sixteen  Western  bishops.  I  Even  this 
was  not  his  last  word.  In  the  following  year,  he  addressed  to 
Eutychius,  patriarch  of  Constantinople,  a  formal  retractation, 
declaring  that  he  has  been  the  instrument  of  Satanic  delu- 
sion, but  that  now,  delivered  by  Christ  from  all  confusion  of 
mind,  he  subscribes  to  the  anathema  he  had  so  often  resisted. § 
\Mrether  it  was  the  function  of  his  infallibility  to  discover  his 
delusion,  or  of  his  delusion  to  be  sure  of  his  infallibility  at 
last,  the  sequel  does  not  help  us  to  determine.  No  time  was 
allowed  him  for  further  tergiversation  ;  released  from  Con- 
stantinople by  his  submission,  he  died  on  his  journey  back  to 
Eome. 

Such  variance  from  himself  in  a  supreme  spiritual  guide  is 
too  startling  to  be  often  repeated  in  history.  But  variance  of 
the  popes  from  each  other  is  a  more  frequent  phenomenon, 
and  is  equally  fatal  to  claims  of  unity  ;  for,  where  a  uniform 
infallibility  is  asserted  of  a  perpetual  dynasty  of  rulers,  they 
virtually  become  a  single  undying  personality,  and  it  matters 
not  whether  the  official  acts  which  we  compare  proceed  from 
many  members  or  from  one.  The  further  progress  of  the 
controversy  about  the  person  of  Christ  soon  made  it  apparent 
that  Roman  prelates  might  contradict  and  anathematize  their 
predecessors.  The  decision  that  there  were  in  Christ  two 
natures,  left  out — disaffected  and  in  the  cold — large  bodies  of 
Oriental  Christians  whom  the  emperor  wished  to  conciliate, 
and  restore  into  Catholic  communion ;  and,  to  meet  their 
demand  for  a  less  divided  Christ,  it  was  suggested  by  the 
Emperor  Heraclius,  with  approval  on  the  part  of  the  patriarchs 


♦ 


Sacrosancta  Concil.     Labbe.,  torn.  v.  p.  328,  scqq^. 
t  Ibid.  p.  683,  seqq.  X  Ibid.  p.  337. 

§  Coucil.  omu.  Coll.,  torn.  xii.  p.  21,  seqq. 


142  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

of  Constantinople  (Sergius)  and  of  Alexandria  (Cyrus),  that, 
if  the  two  natures  were  placed  at  the  disposal  of  one  active 
principle,  or  will  (£Vc'(>y6<a  .vfaySjO<ic>)),  this  dominant  unity 
would  satisfy  the  scruples  of  the  alienated  party,  without 
compromising  the  decisions  of  the  Catholics.*  But  the  chasm 
opened  by  nearly  two  centuries  of  controversy  was  too  deep 
and  wide  to  be  bridged  by  a  phrase ;  and  the  proposal  made 
in  the  interests  of  peace  proved  but  the  beginning  of  a  fresh 
strife.  It  was  in  vain  that  an  emperor  and  tv/o  patriarchs 
sustained  it.  A  poor  monk,  Sophronius  from  Palestine, 
sufficed  to  upset  it :  he  had  only  to  raise  the  cry  that  the 
one  will  was  but  o)ic  nature  come  back  again,  and  the  flame 
was  soon  rekindled  which  had  driven  the  monophysites  beyond 
the  confines  of  the  Church.  True,  he  was  kept  silent  for  a 
while  ;  but,  having  become  patriarch  of  Jerusalem  in  634,  he 
deemed  it  his  duty  to  sound  the  note  of  alarm,  and  watch 
over  the  purity  of  doctrine  given  him  to  guard. i*  He  addressed 
himself  to  Pope  Honorius,  in  the  hope  of  a  judgment  at  once 
more  authoritative  and  more  favourable  than  Alexandria  or 
Constantinople  had  yielded.  But  Honorius,  while  regretting 
the  importation  of  a  new  ambiguity  into  an  old  dispute,  gave 
the  same  verdict  which  the  other  metropolitans  had  given,  and 
insisted  that  there  could  be  only  one  will  in  Christ ;  else  there 
would  be  room  for  conflict  between  the  wills  divine  and  human. 
Twice  were  imperial  edicts  issued  in  this  "  monothelite''  sense, 
—first  by  Heraclius  in  638  ;t  then  by  Constans,  ten  years 
later,  threatening  terrible  punishment  against  all  the  dis- 
obedient. Meanwhile,  however,  the  temper  of  Eome  was 
changed.  The  turn  of  the  tide  was  just  traceable  in  the  im- 
mediate successor  of  Honorius ;  but  John  the  Fourth,  who 
followed,  pronounced  his  anathema  against  the  doctrine  of 
one  will§  m  a  synod  of  a.d.  641  ;  and  at  the  first  Lateran 
Council,  held  by  Martin  the  First  in  649,  the  imperial  edicts, 
and  the  patriarchs  who  had  supported  them,  were  solemnly 
condemned,  and  the  doctrine  of  two  wills  decreed  to  be 
orthodox. II     Such  bold  defiance  of  the  civil  power  exposed 

*  Concil.  omu.  Coll.,  torn.  xiv.  p.  588.  f  Ibid.  torn.  xv.  p.  86. 

t  Ibid.  torn.  xiv.  p.  564  ;  xv.  p.  152  ;     §  Ibid.  torn.  xiv.  p.  569,  seq^g^.,  epist.  2. 
II  Ibid.  torn.  XV.  p.  260,  seqcj^. 


Chap.  I.]         THE    CATHOLICS  AND    THE    CHURCH.  143 

this  heroic  ecclesiastic  and  his  supporters  to  cruel  sufferinn-s, 
but  with  so  little  efiect,  that,  in  680,  a  sixth  ecumenical 
council  had  to  be  held  at  Constantinople  for  further  delibera- 
tion ;  and,  under  the  guidance  of  Pope  Agatho,  the  doctrine 
of  two  wills  was  defined  and  adopted  ;  the  only  resisting 
bishop  was  deposed  ;  and,  among  the  past  upliolders  of  the 
opposite  opinion,  the  Pope  Honorius  was  anathematized  by 
name.*  This  denunciation  of  the  Yicar  of  Christ  was  for- 
mally communicated  by  Leo  the  Second,  who  had  succeeded 
to  the  Papacy  ere  the  council  closed,  to  the  bishops  of  Spain  ;  f 
and,  in  a  letter  to  the  Emperor  Constantine,  he  speaks  of 
Honorius  as  one,  "  qui  hanc  apostolicam  ecclesiam  non 
apostolicae  traditionis  doctrina  lustravit,  sed  profana  proditione 
immaculatam  subvertere  conatus  est."  \  Yet  Leo  paid 
Honorius  were  both  infallible,  and  represented  on  earth  the 
unbroken  unity  of  divine  truth. 

The  questions  of  sin  and  grace,  in  which  the  genius  of 
Augustine  and  the  moral  strength  of  Pelagius  came  into  con- 
flict, had  the  effect,  no  less  than  the  early  Christology,  of 
entangling  the  Church  in  contradictory  decisions.  Two 
African  synods — held  in  a.d.  416  at  Carthage  and  at  Mileve, 
under  the  overshadowing  influence  of  the  Bishop  of  Hippo — 
decided  that  Pelagius,  by  allowing  to  man  free  power  to  do 
the  will  of  God,  infringed  upon  the  province  of  divine  grace, 
and  rendered  infant  baptism  superfluous ;  and  they  memo- 
rialized Eome  to  put  down  such  errors.  §  Lmocent  the  First 
at  once  acceded  to  their  request,  and,  in  virtue  of  his  apostolic 
authority,  excommunicated  Pelagius,  his  friend  C<ielestius,  and 
all  adherents  to  their  doctrine.il  This  was  one  of  the  last 
acts  of  a  pope  who  eminently  represented  the  spirit  of  the 
Western  Church.  His  successor,  Zosimus,  was  a  Greek ; 
and  when,  in  a.d.  417,  the  well-reasoned  counter-statement  of 
the  accused  came  up  for  examination,  it  impressed  him  so 
favourably,  and  so  distinctl}'  disclaimed  the  consequences 
fastened  upon  their  teaching,  tliat  he  declared  himself 
satisfied,  reported  to  the  African  Church  in  favour  of  their 

*  Concil.  omn.  Coll.,  torn.  xvi.  ^.  509.         t  Ibid.  torn.  xvii.  p.  6. 

*  Ibid.  torn.  xvi.  p.  586.  §  Ibid.  torn.  iv.  pp.  357,  364,  375. 

II  Ibid.  torn.  iv.  pp.  GO,  05. 


1 44  A  UTHORl  TV  AR  TIF  I  CI  A  LL  V  MISPLA  CED.    [Book  1 1. 

orthodoxy,  and  added  a  Avarning  against  giving  ear  to  the 
caknnnies  of  ill-disposed  men.*  It  was  not  to  be  expected 
that  a  keenly-agitated  question  should  be  set  at  rest  by  two 
conflicting  Papal  verdicts  delivered  within  a  few  months  of 
each  other.  The  African  party  convened  a  new  synod  at 
Carthage,  in  418,  and  carried  nine  articles  of  condemnation 
against  their  opponents  ;  and,  not  disdaining  a  more  effective 
weapon,  drew  from  the  joint  emperors,  Honorius  and  Theo- 
dosius,  an  edict,  visiting  with  exile  and  confiscation  of  goods 
all  adherents  of  the  Pelagian  heresy.  Zosimus  recoiled  before 
this  display  of  determination.  He  not  only  ceased  to  shield 
the  accused ;  he  cut  them  off  from  the  communion  of  the 
Church,  anathematized  their  doctrines,  and  addressed  a 
circular  letter  to  all  bishops,  visiting  Pelagianism  with  an 
express  condemnation,  which  they  were  required  to  sign.t 
Perhaps,  however,  though  at  the  cost  of  temporary  incon- 
sistency, the  Church  struggled  into  unity  on  this  matter  at 
last  ?  On  the  contrary,  eleven  and  twelve  centuries  later, 
the  very  same  strife  broke  out  anew  in  the  University  of 
Louvain,  and  so  divided,  first  the  Augustinians  and  the 
Molinists,  next  the  -Jansenists  and  the  Jesuits,  that  repeated 
appeal  had  to  be  made  to  Piome,  fresh  heresies  to  be  created, 
fresh  subscription  enforced,  without,  after  all,  setting  the 
dispute  at  rest. 

The  history  of  ecclesiastical  legislation  with  regard  to  the 
exercise  of  diabolical  arts  affords  a  striking  practical  refuta- 
tion of  the  pretension  to  persistent  unity.  If  it  affords, 
indeed,  an  argument  less  formally  complete  than  the  contra- 
dictory edicts  hitherto  cited,  this  is  only  because  no  Papal 
decree,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  yet  frankly  repudiated  the 
old  demonology  ;  and  though  it  has  silently  disappeared  from 
the  language  of  faith,  and  the  processes  which  assumed  it 
have  passed  into  desuetude,  the  canons  which  treat  of  it  are 
unrepealed ;  so  that,  judged  by  its  statutes,  the  infallible 
Church  may  be  taken  as  still  upholding  the  reality  of  sorcery. 
But  in  effect  it  has  outlived  that  monstrous  superstition,  and, 
through   the   lips   of   its    scholars    and    intellectual    guides, 

*  Concil.  onm.  Coll.,  torn.  iv.  p.  394. 

t  Ibid.  p.  418,  with  passages  there  referred  to. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  145 

speaks,  like  the  rest  of  the  ^YOl•kI,  ^Yith  shame  and  compassion 
of  the  miseries  ^Yhich  so  poor  a  dehision  inflicted  on  mankind. 
This  is  an  entirely  new  state  of  mind ;  and,  if  it  ba  right,  it 
condemns  as  wrong  a  series  of  chm-ch-edicts  extending  over 
seven  hmidred  ^^ears.  The  "  Old  Cathohcs,"  indeed,  would 
persuade  us  that  this  modern  spirit  is  only  a  return  to  tlie 
early  doctrine  of  their  communion.  "  For  many  centuries," 
they  say,  "  the  popular  notions  about  diabolical  agency, 
nocturnal  meetings  with  demons,  enchantments,  and  witch- 
craft, were  viewed  and  treated  as  a  folly  inconsistent  with 
Christian  belief.  Many  councils  directed  that  penance  should 
be  imposed  on  women  addicted  to  this  delusion."*  They 
appeal,  in  proof,  to  an  old  canon  found  in  the  collection  of 
Eegino,  Abbot  of  Priim,  at  the  beginning  of  the  tenth  century, 
and  known  by  the  mistaken  name  of  the  canon  of  Ancyra.t 
This  document  (which  probably  speaks  the  sentiment  of  the 
seventh  century)  certainly  treats  the  popular  belief  in  the  arts 
of  the  magician  and  the  diviner  as  a  heathen  superstition, 
which  the  servants  of  the  Church  are  bound  to  root  out  from 
their  diocese  ;  and  requires  them  in  their  preaching  to  deliver 
the  people  from  their  delusion.  But,  unfortunately,  this  is 
not  all.  Far  from  teaching  "  the  nonentity  of  witchcraft," 
the  edict  distinctly  recognizes  its  reality  and  its  supernatural 
character,  only  treats  it  as  a  devilish  instrument  of  delusion, 
instead   of   a   divine   endowment   of  knowledge   and   power. 

*  The  Pope  aud  the  Couucil.  By  Jauus  :  authorized  trauslatiou  from  the 
German.    P.  249. 

t  Libri  duo  de  causis  synodaUbus  et  discipliuis  ecclesiasticis.  C.  371. 
Wasserschlebcu  :  1840.  Bishop  Burchard  (who  died  in  1025)  first  gave  tlie 
credit  of  tliis  decree  to  tlie  aute-Niceue  synod  held  at  Ancyra,  in  Galatia, 
A.D.  315,  in  his  Magnmn  Decretorum  Volumen,  book  >:.,  wliere  it  is  re- 
produced. Tlie  twenty-fourth  canon  of  Ancyra,  however,  though  on  tlac  same 
subject,  is  very  different,  simply  enacting  that  "those  who,  in  conformity 
with  Gentile  usages,  resort  to  divination,  or  introduce  persons  into  their 
houses  witli  a  view  to  devise  incantations  or  means  of  expiation,"  are  to 
incur  certain  penances  ;  and  entering  in  no  way  into  the  doctrinal  grounds 
of  this  prohibition.  See  Routh's  Reliquife  Sacrte,  vol.  iv.  p.  126,  for  the 
original  text.  In  the  Acts  of  Pope  Damasus,  a  decree  of  a  Roman  couucil 
(a.d.  382)  is  cited  tlms :  "  Omues  maleficos,  sacrilegos,  augures,  aliisve  supor- 
stitionibus  vacantes,  excommunicaudos  esse.  Fcminas  illas,  qua?  a  dasmoue 
iIlus£E  putant  se  noctu  super  auimalia  ferri,  atque  cum  Herodiade  circum- 
vagari,  eadem  seutentia  plccteudas  esse." — Coucil.  omn.  Coll..  tom.  iii. 
p.  421. 

L 


146  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Some  women,  it  says,  having  turned  to  Satan,  have  been 
misled  by  his  deceptions,  and  pretend  to  have  ridden  on 
certain  animals  by  night,  in  company  with  Holda  and  a 
number  of  women,  over  a  great  part  of  the  earth,  and  to 
have  been  called  away  to  their  service.  Unhappily  they  have 
not  been  the  only  victims  of  superstition ;  but  countless 
numbers  have  been  led  by  them  to  accept  this  delusion  as 
reality,  and  to  fall  into  the  Pagan  error  of  supposing  that 
there  is  some  other  divine  nature  besides  God.  The  clergy, 
therefore,  must  emphatically  preach  to  their  parishioners  that 
all  this  is  a  false  show,  put  into  men's  minds  not  by  a  divine 
being,  but  by  an  evil  spirit ;  viz.,  the  Devil,  who  assumes  the 
form  of  an  angel  of  light.  As  soon  as  he  has  made  himself 
master  of  some  woman  by  the  force  of  superstition,  he 
changes  himself  into  forms  of  disguise,  and  occupies  the  soul 
he  has  captured  with  visions  or  dreams — now  bright,  now 
sad — of  persons  known  or  unknown,  causing  all  sorts  of 
aberration  ;  the  victim  believing  that  all  this  is  material  fact, 
instead  of  mental  "^phantasm.  Hence  it  is  to  be  publicly 
proclaimed  that  whoever  believes  things  of  this  kind  loses  the 
faith ;  and  that  whoever  has  not  the  right  faith  of  God 
is  none  of  his,  but  belongs  to  the  Devil,  in  whom  he 
believes.* 

We  have  here,  not  a  denial  of  the  sorcerer's  phenomena, 
but  simply  a  transference  of  them  (1)  from  the  objective  to 
the  subjective  field ;  (2)  from  divine  to  diabolic  power.  The 
doctrine  is  in  harmony  with  the  idea  traditional  in  the  Church 
through  all  its  previous  centuries, — that  the  outside  world  of 
the  unbaptized,  the  unconverted,  the  heathen,  was  under  the 
dominion  of  Satan,  from  which  the  Christian  theocracy  alone 
afforded  an  ark  of  refuge.  And,  in  the  struggle  betvv-een  the 
two  realms,  the  Pagan  divinities  and  oracles  and  usages  were 
regarded  as  the  great  hiding-places  of  disguise  for  the  evil 
spirits,  whence  they  put  forth  their  superhuman  power  to 
beguile  the  souls  of  men.  Against  these  snares  there  was  no 
protection  but  the  true  faith,  which  enlisted  omnipotence  on 
the  believer's  side.  "  Damonesjides  fugat,"  it  wSbS  said;  and 
in  every  act  of  faith,  like  prayer  to  God,  nay,  in  every  symbol 

*  Gratian :  Decret.,  p.  ii.  Caus.  xxvi.  qn.  v.  c.  12. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  147 

of  it,  like  the  sign  of  the  cross,  or  the  uttered  name  of  Christ, 
there  was  power  to  drive  the  fiends  aw^ay.  Of  every  baptism, 
exorcism  of  evil  spirits  formed  a  part,  the  response  to  which, 
on  the  part  of  the  baptized,  the  abrenimciatio  Diaholi  ("I 
renomice  the  Devil  and  all  his  works  "),  remains  to  this  day. 
Inasmuch  as  the  polemic  against  Paganism  consisted,  not 
in  denying  the  preternatural  facts,  incantations,  cracles, 
possessions,  atmospheric  changes,  and  anomalies  of  animal 
life,  nor  in  claiming  them  for  the  providence  of  God,  but  in 
snatching  them  from  the  pretended  divinities,  and  making 
them  over  to  the  Devil  and  his  tribe,  the  effect  of  this  enlarge- 
ment of  his  domain  inevitably  was  to  intensify  the  popular 
belief  in  his  agency,  and  horror  at  his  manifestations. 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that,  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
we  find  this  belief  so  extended  and  confirmed,  as  not  only  to 
render  an  ignorant  i)opulation  excitable  to  frenzy,  but  to 
corrupt  the  very  fountains  of  authority,  and  fill  even  Papal 
edicts  with  contemptible  hallucinations.  Yielding  to  a  report 
from  his  inquisitors  in  Germany,  Gregory  IX.  describes  in  a 
bull  of  the  year  1233  the  ceremony  of  initiation  practised 
by  certain  heretics,  on  whose  speedy  punishmeni  he  insists. 
"With  evident  good  faith  he  relates  how  the  novice  pays  the 
homage  of  a  kiss  on  the  hind-quarters  to  the  Devil  in  the 
shape  of  a  toad  as  large  as  a  goose,  a  duck,  or  an  oven,  or  of 
a  black  tom-cat  lifting  his  tail  for  the  salutation  :  how,  at 
certain  stages  of  the  proceeding,  there  appears,  in  place  of 
these  incarnations,  a  pallid  man  of  mere  skin  and  bone,  with 
jet  black  eyes,  whose  kiss,  cold  as  ice,  drives  the  Catholic 
faith  clear  out  of  mind  ;  and,  again,  a  figure,  shaggy  below, 
but,  above  the  hips,  brilliant  as  the  sun ;  how  to  this  per- 
sonage the  disciple  is  introduced  by  the  president,  as  a 
devotee,  a  shred  of  his  coat  being  offered  in  pledge,  and.  being 
accepted,  is  handed  back  to  the  charge  of  the  master ;  and 
how,  by  horrid  rites,  these  miscreants  carry  out  their  doctrine 
that  the  Devil  will  prove  in  the  end  to  be  the  true  God,  and 
change    places    with    his    rival.*     The   proceedings   of  the 


» 


Epist.  Greg.  IX.  Th.  Ripoll,  Bullarium  ord.  Predicat.  i.  52.  The  occa- 
sion of  this  letter  is  described  by  Labbe,  SacrOs.  Coucilia,  torn.  xi.  pp.  478, 
479. 


L    2 


148  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

inquisitor,  Conrad  of  Marburg,  founded  on  this  ])ull,  bear 
witness  to  the  terrible  earnest  in  which  these  statements  were 
made.  To  each  of  the  accused  the  alternative  was  offered, — 
to  confess  his  kiss  to  the  toad,  the  cat,  and  the  pale  man,  and 
save  his  life  ;  or  to  protest  his  innocence,  and  be  burned 
alive.* 

Neither  scruples  of  humanity,  nor  the  dawning  light  of 
a  returning  intellectual  civilization,  disturbed  the  resolute 
persistency  of  the  Church  in  this  superstition.  Murmurs, 
indeed,  were  heard  against  the  intrusion  of  Papal  officers, 
selected  from  the  regular  orders,  on  the  judicial  functions  of 
a  foreign  episcopacy,  and  on  the  national  rights  of  French 
and  German  subjects  ;  but  the  pope,  who  could  bear  down 
siich  constitutional  resistance,  had  no  theological  contradiction 
to  expect.  This  is  evident  from  the  celebrated  bull  of  Inno- 
cent YIIL,  issued  at  the  end  of  a.d.  1484,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  ratifying  the  authority  of  his  inquisitors  over 
places  not  expressly  named  in  their  first  credentials,  and 
giving  them  paramount  jurisdiction  over  every  place  in 
Germany  where  they  chose  to  open  their  court.  The  whole 
tension  of  the  edict  is  directed  against  a  local  and  political 
obstacle  ;  and,  in  its  definition  of  the  crime  which  the  com- 
mission is  appointed  to  try,  there  is  still  the  quiet  assumption 
of  its  reality,  which  could  only  be  made  in  the  face  of  its 
universal  recognition.  It  complains  of  the  extensive  preva- 
lence of  diabolical  arts,  which  are  employed  to  blight  the  fields 
and  orchards,  to  prevent  the  increase  of  flocks  and  herds,  and 
even  the  human  race,  to  afflict  life  with  strange  maladies,  to 
draw  men  into  apostasy,  and  induce  unheard-of  crimes ;  it 
attributes  these  to  the  direct  agency  of  Satan  ;  it  empowers 
the  bearers  of  the  pope's  apostolic  letters  to  visit  such  offences 
with  fine,  imprisonment,  and  other  punishment ;  and  threatens 
all  who  obstruct  them  with  the  wrath  of  Almighty  God  and 
his  blessed  apostles  Peter  and  Paul.f     To  aid  in  carrying  out 

*  See  the  Letter  of  the  Archbishop  of  ]\Iainz  to  the  Pope,  in  Alberici 
Chron.  ann.  1233. 

t  The  hull,  "  Sumniis  desiderautes  affectibus,"  is  given  iu  Hauber's  Biblio- 
theca,  acta  et  scripta  magica :  36  Stiick  1739-1745.  St.  I.,  p.  1,  scq(i.  See, 
also,  Gustav  Roskoff's  Gescliichte  des  Teufels  :  book  ii.  p.  222. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  149 

this  edict,  the  inquisitors,  Jacob  Sprenger  and  Heinrieh 
Kramer,  pubhshed  in  1487  their  "  Malleus  Maleficarum,"  or 
"  Witches'  Hammer,"  under  the  patent  of  the  Emperor 
Maximilian  and  the  sanction  of  the  pope, — a  complete  hand- 
book of  sorcery,  which  for  upwards  of  two  centuries  guided 
the  proceedings  in  such  cases,  and  had  almost  the  force  of 
law.  It  affirms  the  reality  of  magic,  and  the  origin  of  its 
power  in  a  personal  compact  with  the  Devil,  of  monstrous 
progeny  from  licentious  relations  with  demons,  of  an  influence 
of  the  heavenly  bodies  on  the  moral  actions  of  men,  of  the 
magician's  ability  to  bewitch  people  with  preternatural  hate 
or  love.  Betraying  a  singular  scruple  against  the  infliction 
of  capital  punishment  without  confession  of  the  crime,  it  gives 
instructions  for  extorting  confession  on  the  rack  ;  previous  to 
which,  however,  it  is  desirable  to  get  a  holy  angel  to  cancel 
the  Devil's  control  over  his  victim,  otherwise  he  will  make 
her  insensible  to  pain  :  and  no  terror  you  can  apply  will 
make  her  speak.  The  decree  which  called  this  manual  into 
existence,  and  appears  as  its  preface,  applied  to  I'jjper  Ger- 
many alone  ;  but  succeeding  popes,  Julius  II, ,  Alexander  YI., 
Leo  X.,  Adrian  Y.,*  l)y  the  issue  of  similar  edicts,  drew 
land  after  land  within  the  "magic  circle,"  with  such  effect, 
that  in  the  diocese  of  Como  alone,  there  were,  during  the 
earlier  part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  no  fewer,  on  an  average, 
than  a  thousand  trials,  and  a  hundred  executions  at  the 
stake,  t 

So  far,  it  must  be  confessed,  the  Church,  in  its  teaching 
and  discipline  on  this  matter,  had  not  forfeited  its  unity ;  nor 
can  we  say  that  there  is  more  than  a  difference  of  degree 
between  the  earliest  doctrine  of  demoniacal  possession,  and 
the  epidemic  superstition  which  lighted  up  the  fifteenth  and 
the  sixteenth  centuries  with  fires  of  human  sacrifice.  But 
how  is  it  that  no  voice  is  longer  raised  on  behalf  of  the 
infallil)le  edicts  which  scattered  over  Europe  the  torches  to 
kindle  those  fires  ?  that  the  only  plea  for  them  now  urged  is, 
that  the  barbarism  of  the  age,  not  the  rule  of  the  Church,  is 

*  This  last,  a  fair  sample  of  the  wliole,  may  be  seen  iu  Coucil.  omu.  Coll., 
tom.  xxxiv.  p.  588. 
t  Barthol.  de  Spina,  de  Strigibus,  c.  12. 


150  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Beck  II. 

responsible  for  them,  and  created  the  same  results  in  the 
communities  born  of  the  Eeformation?  Such  a  defence  is 
simply  an  echo  of  the  indictment,  surrendering  the  Church  to 
the  pressure  of  barbarism,  and  the  illusions  of  idolatry, 
within  the  very  province  which  it  claims  for  legislation,  and 
so  far  waiving  its  pretensions  to  supernatural  insight.  Yet 
no  higher  ground  of  justification  can  be  taken  in  consistsncy 
with  recent  history.  Not  only  have  the  prosecuticzis  for 
sorcery  gradually  disappeared, — a  fact  which  might  be  ex- 
plained by  the  resistance  of  princes,  and  the  "  usurpations  " 
of  the  civil  courts, — but  from  the  Inquisition  itself  vre  have  a 
memorable  confession,  bearing  date  1657,  that  its  commis- 
sioned judges  had  long  been  guilty  of  irregular  procedure  and 
unwarrantable  use  of  the  torture-chamber,  to  the  sacrifice  of 
many  innocent  lives.  The  murdered  victims  of  the  authority 
which  cannot  err  were  beyond  the  reach  of  this  apology  ;  but 
it  introduced  restraints  and  alleviations,  which,  enforced  as 
they  were  by  the  altered  spirit  of  the  times,  rapidly  rendered 
harmless  the  tribunals  so  long  the  terror  of  Europe.  Catholic 
theologians  now  speak,  like  other  men,  with  habitual  con- 
tempt of  the  belief  in  sorcery.  The  perplexing  question  is 
how  this  state  of  mind  can  be  pieced  on  to  the  decrees  of 
Gregory  and  Innocent,  so  as  to  leave  unharmed  the  sublime 
"  unity  "  of  the  faith  in  all  ages  ? 

In  the  year  1616  Pope  Paul  V.,  with  the  Congregation  of 
the  Index,  condemned  as  "  false,  and  totally  opposed  to  the 
Divine  Scriptures,"  the  work  of  Copernicus,  "  De  Pievolution- 
ibus  Orbium,"  which  achieved  for  all  time  the  miracle  of 
Joshua,  "  Sun,  stand  thou  still !  "  In  1818  Pope  Pius  VII., 
in  full  consistory,  repealed  the  condemnation.  In  the  interval, 
the  Holy  Ofiiee  prosecuted  and  sentenced  Galileo,  in  1633,  for 
suspected  adherence  to  the  Copernican  heresy  ;  and  in  1741 
the  Catliolic  editors  of  Newton's  "Principia"  apologized  for 
that  Yv'ork  in  these  words :  "  Newton,  in  this  book,  assumes 
the  hypothesis  of  the  motion  of  the  earth ;  and  the  author's 
system  could  not  be  exjDOunded  except  on  the  same  hypothesis. 
Hence  we  have  been  obliged  to  assume  a  character  other  than 
our  own  ;  but  we  declare  our  obedience  to  the  decree  of  the 
supreme  pontitis  against  the  motion  of  the  earth."     In  the 


Chap.  I.l        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  151 

present  day,  Catholics  are  Copernicans,  like  other  people ;  and 
what  was  heresy  once  is  heresy  no  more.  How  to  embrace 
both  judgments  within  the  limits  of  infallibility,  and  resolve 
the  contradiction  into  a  higher  unity,  might  puzzle  even  a 
Hegelian,  but  has  not  proved,  till  very  lately,  beyond  the 
resources  of  Ultramontane  advocacy.  The  divine  exemption 
from  error  affects  only  decisions  ex  cathedra;  and  thougli 
these  are  not  necessarily  bulls  issued  directly  by  the  Pope, 
but  may  be  resolutions  of  a  Eoman  "  congregation,"  they 
must,  in  that  case,  fulfil  two  conditions, — they  must  receive 
the  approval  of  the  Holy  Father  ;  and  they  must  be  published 
by  his  express  desire.  Now,  the  second  of  these  conditions, 
we  are  assured,  fails  in  the  decrees  of  1616  and  1633 ;  and 
the  latter  cannot  be  shown  to  satisfy  either  condition.*  Under 
permission  of  this  ingenious  but  precarious  argument,  the 
condemnation  of  Galileo  was  set  down  in  1866  among  the 
human  mistakes  of  a  pontifical  congregation.  But  in  1867, 
fresh  extracts  from  the  minutes  of  Galileo's  trial,  preserved 
in  the  archives  of  the  Inquisition,  were  published  by  M.  Heni-i 
de  I'Epinois,  which  distinctly  show,  both  that  the  proceedings 
simply  carried  out  the  instructions  of  the  Pope,  and  that,  by 
his  direct  command,  copies  of  tlie  sentence  were  forwarded. 
"  that  these  things  may  become  universally  known  "  to  all 
apostolic  nuncios,  and  all  inquisitors  into  heretical  pravity,  to 
be  publicly  read  in  solemn  assembly,  in  presence  of  the  prin- 
cipal professors  of  the  mathematical  art.f  Thus  the  human 
mistake  is  at  once  metamorphosed  into  a  divine  decree ;  and, 
treated  as  a  pretender  yesterday,  is  on  the  throne  of  suj^reme 
authority  to-day.  As  the  unity  of  the  Church  cannot  be 
restored  by  sacrificing  the  inquisitors  of  Paul  Y.,  perhaps 
some  flaw  may  be  looked  up  in  the  repealing  act  of  Pius  YII. ; 
and  everything  may  be  set  right  by  putting  the  sun  in  motion 
again,  and  re-enacting  the  Ptolemaic  system. 

Neither,  then,  in  the  stability  of  her  doctrines,  nor  in  the 

*  See  the  Authority  of  Doctrinal  Decisions,  which  are  not  Definitions  of 
Faitli.  By  William  George  Ward,  D.Ph.  Essay  viii.,  the  Case  of  Galileo, 
1866. 

t  See,  for  an  interesting  account  cf  this  recent  and  important  discoveiy, 
Mv.  Scdley  Taylor's  j^aper  in  ^lacmillan's  Magazine,  December,  1873  :  Galileo 
and  Papal  Infallibility.     The  statements  in  the  text  are  from  this  essay. 


152  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  iriSPLACED.    [Book  II. 

consistency  of  her  tribunals,  does  the  Church  give  evidence  of 
any  immunity  from  the  laws  of  ordinary  growth  and  change. 
Nor,  even  if  we  could  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fluctuations  of 
opinion,  and  look  only  at  the  cluster  of  beliefs  which  her 
artificers  have  held  together  by  screws  and  holdfasts,  till  httle 
else  but  the  rivets  remain,  should  we  see  in  this  residuary 
orthodoxy  anything  persuasively  divine  either  in  its  source  or 
in  its  character.  How  has  it  arisen  ?  Have  we  here  a  real 
unity  among  minds  free  to  act,  and  yet  restrained  from  aber- 
ration by  the  inner  strength  of  divine  conviction '?  Or  is  it 
an  illusory  unity,  produced  by  the  simple  process  of  expelling 
all  variety  ?  It  is  notorious  that  the  whole  history  of  Christ- 
endom is  darkened  by  controversies,  at  once  fierce  and  tedious, 
ending  always  in  cutting  off  the  outvoted  minority  as  a 
withered  branch,  and  proclaiming  the  triumphant  majority, 
which  was  left  in  possession,  to  be  the  only  true  Church. 
Even,  therefore,  if  this  invariability  held  good  (and  no  perver- 
sion of  history  can  carry  it  back  into  the  first  two  centuries), 
it  would  bear  witness,  not  to  the  immanent  action  of  the 
Divine  Spirit,  but  to  the  oppressive  weight  of  human  tyranny. 
What,  indeed,  is  it  but  that  very  attribute  of  stationariness, 
which,  in  all  other  historical  fields,  we  treat  as  the  sure  mark 
of  a  kingdom  of  darkness,  not  of  a  realm  of  supernatural  light  ? 
Everywhere  else,  in  China,  for  example,  or  in  ancient  Egypt 
(as  it  has  been  erroneously  imagined),  the  fact  that  centuries 
teach  nothing,  and  change  nothing  ;  that  thought  and  belief 
at  the  end  of  fifty  generations  are  just  where  they  were  at  the 
beginning  ;  that  they  have  no  more  to  say  to  God  or  man  in 
an  old  world  than  in  a  new, — is  justly  regarded  as  an  oppro- 
brium and  sign  of  inward  poverty ;  the  proof  of  a  dead  con- 
servatism, that  wraps  in  a  napkin  the  mere  shrivelled  form  of 
a  divine  life,  and  confounds  the  perpetuity  of  its  mummy  with 
immortal  bemg.  Why  should  we  attribute  the  highest 
divinity  to  a  crystallized  church,  and  the  lowest  humanity  to 
a  crystallized  civilization  ? 

2.  No  one  can  desire  to  deny  the  claim  of  sanctity  for  the 
Catholic  Church,  if  he  have  studied  its  influence  through  dark 
and  troubled  ages,  and  on  a  long  train  of  devout  and  devoted 
minds.     That  Church  has  proved  its  capacity  to  defy  every 


Chap.  1. 1        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  153 

injustice  except  its  own,   to  pity  every  suffering  needless  to 
itself,  to  banish  every  darkness  deeper  than  the  cloister-shade. 
It  has  worked  out  an  ideal  of  character — and  approached  it  in 
many  high  examples — truly  original  as  compared  with  the 
standard  of  Fagan  times,  and  marked,  without  sacrifice  of 
force,  by  a  depth  and  sweetness  and  patience  of  self-surrender 
never  known  before.     But  these  are  Catholic  phenomena  only 
because  they  are  Christian.     They  have  reappeared  in  all  the 
great  sections  of  divided  Christendom  :    they  are  ?j  growth 
from  the  new  piety  and  tender  humanity  which  have  been  the 
response  of  the  heart,  wherever  the  eye  of  Christ  has  fixed  its 
look.     "Who  dares  to  claim  these  as  marking  an  ecclesiastical 
monopoly  of  supernatural  grace  ?     To  make  good  his  case,  he 
must  prove  that  they  specially  pervade  the  whole  organism, 
and  present  the  proportions  of  the  holy  and  the  unholy  far 
otherwise  than  we  find  them  in  the  world  without.      This 
surely  is  the  least  that  can  be  looked  for  in  that  "  mystical 
body  "  which  is  "  permanently  united  with  the  Holy  Ghost, 
the  Sanctifier."     Yet  who  can  say  that  the  Church  has  less 
to  deplore  within  her  pale  that  is  offensive  to  her  saints  than 
in  society  around  '?     License  has  seldom  l)een  carried  farther 
than  by  some  of  the  "  holy  fathers  "  on  the  throne  of  Peter. 
If  by  sanctity  be  meant  some  occult  quality  which  magically 
appeals  to  the  favour  of  God,  it  is  of  no  avail  in  evidence, 
being  itself  out  of  sight.     A  "note  "  that  is  invisible  is  a  con- 
tradiction and  a  nonentity.     If  the  word  denote  self-dedication 
to  a  perfect  Moral  ^Yill,    this   interior    state   of   mind    will 
manifest   itself  in  an  habitual  elevation  of   aim,    purity   ot 
life,  disinterestedness  of  work,  quickness  of  compassion,  and 
balanced  loyalty  to  truth  and  love,  legible  to  every  eye  familiar 
with  the  language  of  character.     Wlien  I  pass  through  Church 
history  in  search  of  these,  I  doubtless  find  them,  but  in  such 
sparse  and  partial  gleams  from  a  wilderness  of  passion  and  of 
wrong,  that  secular  history  itself,  though  less  inspiring  in  its 
supreme  heights,  is  less  dreary  on  its  ordinary  levels,  and  less 
dreadful  in  its  darker  depths.  —  .  . 

There  has  been  no  exemption  within  the  sacred  precincts 
from  the  vices  and  crimes  which  deform  all  human  society. 
For  ages.  Pagan  and  Christian,  it  seemed  the  fate  of  Pome  to 


154  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

be  the  tragic  theatre  of  the  world  ;  but  the  darkest  sins  of  the 
dechning  empire  are  paralleled  by  the  revolting  crimes  of  an 
ascendant  Papacy.  Though  the  Holy  Father,  Eodrigo  Borgia, 
and  his  son  C?esar,  the  cardinal,  were  fortunate  enough  to  have 
no  Tacitus  to  tell  their  story,  the  disgust  and  horror  of  man- 
kind have  done  the  work  of  history,  and  saved  from  oblivion 
a  picture  of  flagitiousness,  treachery,  rapine,  and  murder,  un- 
surpassed in  the  records  of  guilt.  A  pope  who  gained  the 
apostolic  succession  by  bribery,  and  who  quitted  it  l^y  the 
poison-cup  which  he  had  mingled  for  another  ;  who  dissolved 
his  daughter's  marriage  that  he  might  wed  her  to  a  prince  ; 
who  made  his  son  a  cardinal  in  boyhood,  and,  to  do  so, 
fathered  him  on  the  husband  he  had  wronged  ;  who  allied  that 
son  with  the  Orsini  faction,  and,  when  the  end  was  gained, 
screened  him  in  the  betrayal  and  murder  of  its  chief ;  who, 
while  preaching  a  crusade  against  Bajazet  the  Turk,  bargained 
with  him  to  murder  his  rival  brother  Djem,  then  prisoner  at 
Eome,  and  won  the  poisoner's  price, — is  certainly  a  singular 
abode  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  likely  to  radiate  something  other 
than  the  beauty  of  "  sanctity  "  upon  an  obedient  world.  The 
orgies  of  the  palace,  the  assassinations  in  the  street,  the 
swarm  of  flourishing  informers,  the  sale  of  justice,  of  divorce, 
of  spiritual  offices  and  honours,  turned  the  holy  seat  into  an 
asylum  of  concupiscence  and  passion,  and  startled  men  into 
the  belief  that  Antichrist  was  come.  "  Eoma,  gentium  refu- 
gium,  et  arx  populorum  omnibus  sgeculis,  nobilis  jam  carnifi- 
cina  erat."  "  In  urbe  giadiatorum  nunquam  licentia  major, 
nunquam  populo  Eomano  libertas  minor."*  Can  we  say  that 
this  corruption  was  new  and  rare, — a  transient  stain  on  the 
white  robe  of  a  saintly  Church  ?  Alas,  the  long-established 
"  nepotism  "  of  the  popes  ;  the  legislation  of  ths  councils  of 
the  previous  centuries  in  restraint  of  a  dissolute  priesthood; 
the  denunciations  of  Wicliff ;  the  confessions  of  ^neas  Silvius, 
himself  a  vicar  of  Christ,  who  openly  treats  the  most  ordinary 
rules  of  chastity  as  counsels  of  perfection,  meant  only  for 
exceptional  men  ;f  the  popular  satires  of  a  dawning  literature, 

*  Baphaelis  Maffaei  Volaterrani  Commentaria  Urbana :  Anthropologia, 
lib.  xxii.     Rom.  :  1506. 

t-  See  his  letter  to  his  father,  annouuciug  the  birth  of  a  natural  sou,  quoted 
by  Gieseler,  Eccl.  Hist.  div.  v.  c.  2,  §  138,  note  9. 


Cliap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  155 

— all  bear  terrible  witness  to  a  protracted  and  deep-seated 
moi-pl  putrefaction.  Can  we  saj^  that  it  was  local,  a  lingering 
curss  en  the  ancient  capital  of  Paganism,  still  doomed  to  be 
the  colluviss  gentium  !■  More  than  a  centur}-  before,  ths  experi- 
ment of  removal  had  been  enforced  by  political  confiiet ;  and 
of  the  new  court  at  Avignon  we  have,  in  Petrarch's  Letters, 
the  report  of  an  eve-witness,  who  calls  it  the  third  Babylon, 
the  shameless  abode  of  cruelty,  avarice,  and  lust,*  where 
honour,  innocence,  and  piety  are  of  no  avail  against  gold  ;  and 
heaven  and  Christ  themselves  are  put  up  to  sale.  Is  a  distinction 
drawn  between  the  private  character  and  the  official  functions 
of  the  successors  of  Peter  ?  "  Sanctity  "  is  an  attribute  which 
admits  of  no  such  distinction  :  it  belongs  to  the  indivisible 
will  or  personality  ;  it  is  a  tincture  of  reverence  in  the  con- 
science, of  sweetness  in  the  afiections,  of  quietude  in  the 
sacrifice  of  self ;  and  to  say  that  a  man  who  is  licentious  in 
conduct,  and  perfidious  in  human  engagements,  can  be  holy 
in  all  public  relations,  is  an  insult  to  the  primary  apprehen- 
sions of  right.  Besides,  draw  the  line  where  you  will,  it  will 
not  serve  you  here.  If,  as  there  is  reason  to  believe,  John 
XXIII.  poisoned  his  predecessor,  Alexander  Y.,  to  secure  his 
apostolic  chair  ;  and,  as  is  well  known,  Paul  11.  and  Alexander 
VI.  granted  dispensations  for  robbery  and  fraud,  on  payment 
of  money  to  a  crusade  ;  and  Clement  V.  gave  to  King  John  of 
France  and  his  queen  absolution,  through  their  confessor,  for 
the  breach  of  any  oaths  and  engagements,  past  and  future, 
which  it  might  not  be  convenient  to  them  to  keep  ;  and 
Innocent  III.  declared  worthy  of  death  all  who  had  a  scruple 
against  taking  an  oath  ;  and  Boniface  IX.,  as  though  he  re- 
presented Simon  Magus,  instead  of  Peter,  established  the  sale 
of  benefices  into  an  organized  rapacit}*,  and  took  money  from 
all  candidates  alike,  liie  rejected  as  well  as  the  admitted, — are 
these  violations  of  the  most  sacred  human  obligations,  com- 
mitted on  the  steps,  or  from  the  very  seat,  of  the  Papal  throne, 
private  or  public?  Do  they  still  leave  the  epithet  "holy" 
applicable,  without  profanation,  to  their  perpetrators  ?  If  noii, 
and  if,  for  several  centuries,  examples  like  these  infected  tho 
Church  through  Western  Christendom  with  revolting  moral 

*  See  the  Liber  sine  Titulo,  Epist.  10. 


156  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

disease,  how  can  any  instructed  man  prefer,  without  a  bhish, 
the  claim  of  "  sanctity  "  for  an  institution  marked  by  such 
experience  ? 

If  we  are  asked  to  try  the  case,  not  at  the  headquarters  of 
the  system,  but  by  reference  to  the  moral  ideal  which,  in  her 
most  characteristic  and  highest  examples,  the  Church  has 
offered  to  mankind,  we  can  admit  the  claim  only  under  weighty 
reservations.  The  Catholic  training  has  certainly  fixed  in  the 
mind  of  Europe  a  conception  of  perfect  character  in  many 
respects  purer,  larger,  deeper,  than  was  present  to  the  ancient 
world  ;  has  elevated  duty  and  affection  by  making  them  part 
of  the  confidence  between  the  soul  and  God  ;  and,  for  hardi- 
hood of  resolve  against  the  ills  of  life,  has  substituted  a 
patience,  sympath}',  and  trust,  inwardly  quieter,  but  infinitely 
stronger.  But  then,  all  ecclesiastical  honour  for  this  type  of 
character  is  contingent  on  its  co-existence  with  orthodox  belief, 
in  the  suspected  absence  of  which  the  attitude  is  reversed  at 
once,  and  the  half-canonized  disciple  becomes  the  excommuni- 
cated. The  Church  has  made  many  saints,  but  has  also 
murdered  not  a  few.  Do  you  say  that  she  is  sacred  for 
making  so  pure  an  ideal,  and  deny  that  she  is  profane  for 
marring  it  ?  In  his  eighteen  years  of  office,  Cardinal  Thomas 
de  Torquemada  had  burned  alive,  it  is  computed,  eighty-eight 
hundred  victims,  and  punished  ninety  thousand  in  various 
ways,*  not  for  ofi'ences  against  the  moral  law,  or  crimes  against 
society,  but  for  thoughts  of  their  own  about  religion,  which 
only  God,  and  not  the  pope,  had  allowed  ;  or  for  being  Jews 
that  would  not  be  apostates ;  or  for  refusing  on  the  rack  to 
confess  what  they  had  never  done.  When  this  man  had 
carried  in  Spain  his  terrible  resolve  to  clear  the  land  of  infidels, 
and  procured  a  royal  edict  requiring  the  whole  Jewish  popu- 
lation (not  less  than  three  hundred  thousand)  to  vacate  the 
country  within  four  months,  leaving  all  their  gold  and  silver 
behind,  Isaak  Abarbanel,  gaining  audience  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella,  pleaded  for  his  people  with  expostulation  so  pathetic, 
and  offers  so  profuse,  that  the  royal  will,  softened  by  compas- 

'  *  See,  for  the  grounds  of  thi3  statement,  Histoire  Critique  de  I'lnquisition 
d'Espagne.  Par  D.  Jean  Antoine  Florente.  Paris,  1818.  Tom.  iv.  pp.  251, 
252. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  157 

sion  and  cupidity,  ^Yas  on  the  point  of  giving  way  ;  but,  with 
his  usual  instinct  for  critical  moments,  the  great  inquisitor 
appeared,  and  with  lifted  crucij&x  exclaimed,  "  Judas  of  old, 
for  thirty  pieces  of  silver,  betrayed  his  Lord  ;  and  now,  again, 
your  majesties  are  ready  to  sell  him  for  thirty  thousand  pieces 
of  gold.  Here  he  is  !  take  him,  and  sell  him  quickly  !  "  That 
voice,  touching  the  springs  of  a  true  shame,  brought  the  false 
fanaticism  back.  The  bribe  was  flung  away,  and  with  it  the 
relenting  pity  too ;  and,  ere  the  summer  was  over,  Spain  had 
lost  the  best  element  of  her  po^iulation,  and  added  new  tradi- 
tions of  heroism  and  hatred  to  the  life  of  a  people  whose 
history  is  little  else  than  a  memory  of  exiles.*  In  estimating 
the  ecclesiastical  ethics,  are  we  to  give  credit  for  the  saints, 
without  deduction  for  the  inquisitors  ?  Shall  we  celebrate  the 
graces  of  humility,  tenderness,  and  self-devotion  in  the  one, 
and  not  recoil  from  the  pride,  the  injustice,  the  inhumanity, 
of  the  other  ?  It  is  vain  to  tell  me  how  conscientious  these 
persecutors  were.  There  lies  the  very  charge  I  make  against 
the  Church. — that  it  has  put  into  the  conscience  what  has  no 
business  to  be  there  ;  has  treated  error  of  thought  as  if  it  were 
unfaithfulness  of  will  ;  and  misguided  the  affections  of  men 
by  rendering  it  possible  for  them  to  hate  what  is  most  loval^le, 
and  honour,  if  not  love,  what  is  most  hateful.  The  whole 
conception  of  an  "•  orthodoxy"  indispensable  to  the  security 
of  men's  divine  relations — a  conception  which  lias  had  a 
regulative  influence  through  all  ecclesiastical  history — is  an 
ethical  monstrosity,  in  the  presence  of  which  no  philosophy  of 
duty  is  possible,  and  every  moral  ideal  must  ])e  dwarfed  or 
deformed.  Under  its  oppressive  tyranny,  the  hitellectual 
virtues,  which  have  their  exercise  in  the  effort  to  see  and  say 
things  as  they  are, — candour,  sincerity,  openness  to  light, — 
have  withered  away  ;  and  in  their  place  has  been  formed  that 
peculiar  temper — dogmatic  in  assertion,  unjust  in  criticism, 
evasive  in  reply — wliich  has  always  clung  to  the  clerical  order, 
and  left  the  simple  love  of  truth  as  the  adornment,  almost  ex- 
clusively, of  lay  life.  Xay.  this  desolating  notion  has  poisoned 
the  social  affections  of   men  with    rankling  suspicions,  and 

*  See  I.  M.  Jost's  Geschichte  der  Israeliteu  seit  der  Zeit  der  MaccabUer. 
Th.  vii.  ex.     Berlin,  1827. 


1 58  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

spread  through  their  communities  a  system  of  espionage. 
Even  in  ages  when  heresy  was  visited  with  torture  and  death, 
the  edicts  of  councils  and  popes  have  invited  children  to 
detect  and  report  the  swerving  faith  of  their  parents,  sisters 
to  lay  traps  for  brothers,  and  friend  to  betray  friend.  The 
"  robe  of  righteousness  "  falls  of  i!;.3elf  from  the  form,  however 
stately,  of  a,  Power  which  can  thus  consecrate  the  most  odious 
crimes  as  favourite  varieties  of  goodness. 

The  creation  of  artificial  sins  does  not  stop  with  the 
guardianship  of  doctrine,  but  extends  to  the  field  of  practical 
concerns.  The  rising  commerce  of  Southern  Europe,  espec- 
ially of  Genoa  and  Venice,  with  the  consequent  extension  of 
monetary  transactions,  in  the  twelfth  and  following  centuries, 
brought  up  for  settlement  new  problems  of  contract  and 
exchange,  which  the  supernatural  guides  of  morals  were  ex- 
pected to  solve.  All  their  decisions  proceeded  on  the  assump- 
tion that  it  was  contrary  to  the  divine  law  to  charge  or  to  pay 
anything  for  the  use  of  money ;  and  that,  unless  a  loan  as 
returned  was  identical  in  amount  with  the  loan  as  received, 
there  was  robbery  or  fraud  in  the  transaction.  Again  and 
again,*  by  Alexander  III.,  by  Urban  III.,  by  Innocent  III., 
was  this  doctrine  laid  down,  and  violations  of  it  in  practice 
threatened  with  excommunication ;  and  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury it  was  made  the  plea  for  prohibiting  all  mercantile 
partnerships  which  guaranteed  to  the  member  of  a  firm  any 
fixed  return  upon  his  capital,  and  all  negotiation  of  bills  of 
exchange,  except  the  final  presentation  for  payment  to  the 
house  addressed.  The  principle  was  reaffirmed  and  explicitly 
defined  by  Benedict  XIY.,  in  five  canons,  promulgated  in  1745  ; 
and  in  1793  the  Bishop  of  Quebec  was  advised  by  the  Propa- 
ganda, that  guardians  of  children  must  not  put  out  to  loan, 


*  As  early  even  as  the  Council  of  Illiberis,  in  Spain,  held  before  the  Council 
of  Nice,  we  find  legislation  against  "  usury."  The  twentieth  resolution  of 
that  Council,  while  visiting  the  offence  with  excommunication,  treats  it  more 
sharply  in  a  clergyman  than  in  a  layman  :  "  Si  quis  clericorum  detectus  fuerit 
usuras  accipere,  placuit  eum  degradari,  et  abstineri.  Si  quis  etiam  laicus 
accepisse  probatur  usuras  ;  et  promiserit,  correctus  jam,  se  cessaturum,  nee 
ulterius  exacturum ;  placuit  ei  veniam  tribui.  Si  vero  in  ea  iniquitate 
duraverit,  ab  ecclesia  esse  projiciendum." — Eouth's  Relig.  Sac.  vol.  iv. 
n.  263. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  A.\D    THE   CHURCH.  159 

with  interest,  the  trust  fund  committed  to  their  charge.*  A 
rule  which  made  all  banking  business  a  breach  of  "  commuta- 
tive justice"  and  "  the  divine  law  "  could  not  be  expected  to 
keep  its  ground  in  the  economy  of  modern  Europe  ;  and,  since 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  the  Eoman  authorities, 
with  more  prudence  than  candour,  have  evaded  the  problems 
of  this  nature  which  have  been  submitted  to  them  ;  contenting 
themselves  with  a  simple  reference  to  the  existing  canons,  or 
recommending  that  conscience  should  not  be  disturbed.  Nay, 
through  the  whole  period  of  this  prohibitory  legislation,  no 
royal  or  mercantile  house  was  more  deeply  implicated  than 
the  Papacy  itself  in  money-dealings  with  the  capitalists  of 
Italy,  who  certainly  did  not  come  to  the  relief  of  the  Eoman 
indebtedness,  or  the  support  of  the  Eoman  profusion,  without 
security  for  adequate  returns.  Brokers  and  lenders,  who  else- 
where fell  under  malediction  as  the  "  mammon  of  unrighteous- 
ness," brought  their  treasure  and  their  transactions  to  Eome 
or  Avignon,  and  found  themselves  in  a  paradise  of  privilege 
and  peace. 

Were  we  permitted  to  treat  these  errors  and  defects  as  parts 
of  a  simply  human  history,  they  would  take  their  natural 
place  in  the  gradual  ascent  of  European  society  into  clearer 
light  and  higher  conscience,  and  would  bear  favourable  witness 
to  a  religion  that  could  work  itself  free  of  them,  and  join  in 
the  sentence  which  condemns  them  ;  but  when  they  appear  as 
attributes  of  a  divine  institute,  included  in  the  unchangeable 
teachings  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  a  deliverance  of  the  inspired 
custodian  of  faith  and  morals,  they  so  wrap  up  Christianity  in 
obscurantism,  and  weight  it  with  wrong,  that  its  beauty  is  hid, 
its  progressive  life  impeded,  and  its  claim  to  supernatural 
sanctity  rendered  totally  inadmissible.  Even  in  "  The  Lives 
of  the  Saints  "  as  personal  portraits  alone,  judged  without  any 
reference  to  doctrinal  mistake,  we  have  little  more  than  a 
great  conception  spoiled,  a  noble  instrument  of  moral  educa- 
tion applied  to  the  nurture  of  childish  tastes  and  feeble  super- 
stitions, instead  of  to  the  culture  of  a  manly  reverence  and  a 

+  See,  for  a  good  summary  of  the  facts,   Papal  Infallibility  and  Persecu- 
tion, Papal    lufallibility  aud  Usury.      By  an  English  Catholic.     London. 
1870. 


l6o  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  I L 

guiding  love.  "  Consider,"  says  a  distinguished  Ultramontane, 
"  the  saints  of  the  Church.  How  singularly  like  to  each 
other  !  how  singularly  unlike  to  all  besides  !  It  is  a  part  of 
Catholic  doctrine,  that  the  Church  is  actually  infallible  in 
proposing  these  holy  beings  to  the  love  and  reverence  of  the 
faithful.  Moreover,  the  practice  is  earnestly  inculcated  on 
every  Catholic,  of  studying  carefully  their  acts  and  lives,  as 
the  one  highest  and  truest  exhibition  of  Christianity,  as 
presenting  the  one  type  of  character  most  acceptable  to  God, 
— the  type  of  character  by  approximating  to  wdrich,  and  in  no 
other  way,  can  men  become  better  Christians."*  No  more 
winning  hope  can  be  held  out  to  a  devout  mind  than  that  of 
being  thus  drawn  towards  God  through  the  example  and  com- 
munion of  those  who  are  nearest  to  him ;  but,  among  the 
many  collapses  that  await  a  high- wrought  religious  imagina- 
tion, there  is  hardly  a  greater  descent  than  from  the  saint  of 
pure  thought  to  the  saint  of  the  calendar.  The  loss  of  clear 
biographical  interest  in  a  legendary  tissue  of  trivial  miracles 
and  visions,  the  stiff  and  narrow  conception  of  character,  the 
exaggeration  of  ascetic  severities  and  spiritual  contemplations, 
the  strained  opposition  between  the  secular  and  the  divine 
life,  produce  an  indescribable  disappointment  in  the  reader  of 
the  Catholic  hagiology,  giving  him  no  living  friend  to  his 
spirit,  but  leaving  him  in  the  presence  of  something  between 
the  doll  and  the  idol.  So,  at  least,  it  is  with  the  mass  of  such 
literature.  And  when  we  turn  to  the  greater  figures  of 
authentic  history,  now  glorified  with  the  beatific  crown,  we 
might  feel  many  a  doubt,  were  not  the  award  infallible, 
whether  it  sits  well  on  the  head  that  wears  it,  and  would  not 
now  and  then  be  more  becoming  on  modest  but  heretic  brows, 
which  the  canonized  persecutor  bound  with  thorns  of  agony. 
If,  in  our  dreams  of  a  perfection  truly  holy,  we  might  follow 
the  Christlike  image,  we  might,  perhaps,  desire  for  the 
historical  niches  of  our  sanctuary  a  series  of  saints  less  ill- 
humoured  than  Jerome,  less  ferocious  than  Cyril,  less  arro- 
gant than  Becket,  less  jealous  than  Bernard.  Many  an 
unpretending  human  biography,  telling  its  story  in  the  dialect 

*  Tire  Authority  of  Doctrinal  Decisions  which  are  not  Definitions.     By 
William  George  Ward,  D.Ph.,  186G.     P.  100. 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  i6i 

of  nature,  rather  than  of  grace,  has  spoken  to  the  heart  of 
higher  things,  and  stirred  the  conscience  to  nobler  aims,  than 
the  wonderful  tales  of  monks  and  martyrs,  whose  very  dust 
and  relics  are  said  to  dispel  the  powers  of  ill. 

These  many  vestiges  of  moral  imperfection  compel  us  to 
feel  that  we  here  stand  in  a  mixed  and  human  scene  ;  nor  can 
we  find,  as  we  look  round,  any  simply  divine  enclosure,  that 
we  should  take  the  sandals  from  our  feet,  and  say,  "  This  is 
the  house  of  God  :  this  is  the  very  gate  of  heaven." 

3.  By  the  catholicity,  or  tniversality,  of  the  Church  is 
meant,  "not  mere  extension,  but  also  identity  in  all  places."* 
It  is  therefore  the  same  character,  relatively  to  a  wide  area, 
which  is  expressed  by  the  word  nnitij,  relatively  to  long  dura- 
tion, and  must  be  estimated  by  similar  methods.  The  grand 
rule  of  Consensus — "  Quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  al) 
omnibus" — is  divided  by  these  two  notes;  the  "semper" 
constituting  unit));  the  "ubique,"  Catholicity;  the  "  ab 
omnibus,"  resuming  both.  "What  is  this,  we  are  asked,  which 
in  every  latitude,  and  all  round  the  world,  has  a  persistency 
attaching  to  nothing  human, — not  even  to  the  features  and 
colour  of  men's  bodies,  much  less  to  the  expression  of  their 
inner  nature  ?  No  language,  no  polity,  no  code,  no  schemes 
of  thought,  no  rules  of  art,  can  bear  travelling  and  coloniza- 
tion without  rapid  change  of  type.  Nor  among  the  elements 
of  civilization  does  religion  in  itself  enjoy  any  immunitj'  from 
this  general  rule.  But  here  is  a  system,  which,  from  Scandi- 
navia to  the  Cape,  from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Colorado, 
preserves  its  character  intact, — which  is  steady  through  vary- 
ing nationalities, — which  neither  freezes  in  arctic  snows,  nor 
dissolves  in  tropic  heats, — which,  through  the  Babel  of  human 
tongues,  speaks  ever  the  same  venerable  words,  and  holds 
forth  the  same  visible  symbols,  embodying  an  unalterable 
faith,  and  enforcing  on  the  conscience  an  intiexible  moral 
law  ;  so  that  the  miracle  of  Pentecost  might  any  day  virtually 
repeat  itself ;  and  visitors  from  every  clime,  meeting  under 
any  sacred  roof,  would  find  themselves  in  no  strange  sanctuary, 
l)ut  would  hear  proclaimed,  in  tones  they  can  interpret  as  their 

*  The  Temporal  ilission  of  the  Holy  Ghost.     By  Heurj'  Edward,   Arch- 
bishop of  Westmiuster  (Cardinal  IMauuiug).     2ud  ed.,  18GG.     P.  69. 

M 


i62  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

own,  "  the  wonderful  works  of  God."  Whence  can  this  marvel 
of  steadfastness  proceed,  but  from  the  presence  of  objective 
truth,  and  the  guardianship  of  the  divine  Spirit  ? 

Whatever  of  argument  there  may  be  in  this  appeal  to  the 
imagination  admits  of  a  very  simple  reply.  The  truth  of 
God,  it  is  urged,  is  self-consistent  and  uniform.  Yes.  But 
not  everything  which  is  self-consistent  and  uniform  can  claim 
to  be  the  truth  of  God ;  other  causes  than  the  presence  of  the 
divine  element  may  arrest  the  growth  of  variations.  There 
is  a  monotony  in  blindness,  as  well  as  in  perfect  sight ;  where 
the  sun  never  rises,  as  where  it  never  sets  :  and  whether  the 
sameness  is  that  of  abiding  darkness,  or  of  certain  light,  can 
be  judged  only  by  the  conditions  which  attend  it.  If  it  is 
found  among  minds  and  wills  freely  played  upon  by  the 
influences  which  modify  thought  and  character,  their  con- 
currence affords  a  fair  presumption  of  their  having  fallen  into 
harmony  with  the  reality  of  things  ;  but  if  it  appear  only 
within  a  fence  of  severe  restraints,  where  an  audacious 
spiritual  power  has  secured  a  universal  abjectness,  the  sub- 
jective uniformity  stands  in  no  relation  to  ol)jective  truth. 
"Wlien  observers  East  and  West,  gazing  through  perfect 
instruments  on  both  hemispheres,  bring  in  the  same  report  of 
successive  constellations  seen  at  differing  hours,  it  is  because 
one  movement  carries,  and  one  heaven  overarches  all ;  but 
when  blindfolded  men  are  led  about  by  a  skilled  practitioner, 
and  made  to  tell  the  visions  they  behold,  their  agreement  only 
proves  that  they  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  their  prompter, 
and,  because  they  see  nothmg,  can  see  anythmg  that  he 
desires.  Error,  you  say,  is  various,  while  truth  is  one.  Yes  ; 
but  passive  obedience  is  something  short  of  either,  and  keeps 
men  standing,  where,  if  they  do  not  wander,  it  is  only  because 
they  cannot  move.  You  must  first  let  them  be  free  to  lose 
themselves  on  the  open  plam,  and  seek  the  infinite  horizon 
wherever  any  heavenly  glow  may  seem  to  call  ;  and  if  then 
you  find  them  all  moving  along  the  same  radius,  v/ith  eye 
intent  on  the  same  meridian,  and  face  ashine  with  the  same 
beams,  you  may  well  be  sure  that  the  light  of  some  divine 
reality  is  there,  and  intersects  the  trackless  wilds  with  a  true 
pilgrim's  road.     But,  till  then,  cease  to  "  talk  so  exceeding 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  163 

proudly  "  of  a  feature,  which,  ^Yith  equal  reason,  everj'  Buddh- 
ist and  even  every  Freemason  may  make  his  boast. 

It  would  affect  us  strangely  did  we  find  a  vast  and  scattered 
society,  consisting  wholly  of  one-eyed  people  ;  but  the  wonder 
would  vanish,  if  we  learned  that  it  was  a  rule  to  put  out  the 
other  eye  during  the  novitiate,  and  to  remove  out  of  the  way 
all  who  objected  to  the  operation.  Such  a  monocular  pheno- 
menon is  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Church.  It  has  got  its  one  old 
picture  of  divine  things,  as  seen  through  a  single  highly  chro- 
matic lens,  and  represented  by  the  hand  of  a  rude  art ;  and 
resolutely  refusing  to  reproduce  it  with  the  slightest  variation, 
or  to  look  through  a  second  organ,  it  simply  drives  off  all 
persons  who  are  endowed  with  stereoscopic  vision,  and  have 
gained  a  little  msight  into  the  deeper  perspective  of  things. 
In  a  result  thus  brought  about,  there  is  nothing  wonderful, 
except  the  infatuation  which  produces  and  admires  it.  That 
there  are  none  but  true  sheep  under  the  chief  Shepherd  means 
only  that  every  goat  is  turned  out  of  the  fold. 

In  the  uniformity  which  is  claimed,  there  would  be  some- 
thing of  diviner  look,  had  it  been  effected  by  prevention, 
instead  of  by  penalty  and  expulsion.  Had  the  Apostolate  at 
Eome  been  able  to  say,  "  See  the  concord  that  reigns  and 
ever  has  reigned  within  the  circuit  of  my  charge  ;  no  disturb- 
ing doubts,  no  conflicting  thoughts,  no  insurgent  wills,  awaken 
any  trouble  here  :  the  certainty  my  children  need,  I  am  able 
to  afford  ;  the  truth  for  which  they  begin  to  sigh,  I  administer 
betimes  ;  the  usages  and  discipline  their  wants  demand,  I 
prescribe  in  season,  ere  a  cry  is  raised," — this  indeed  would 
well  become  an  organ  of  spiritual  wisdom,  intrusted  with  the 
spiritual  guidance  of  mankind.  Instead  of  this,  the  Church 
has  never  succeeded  in  maintaining  peace  and  concurrence 
within  her  prscincts.  Her  discipline  has  been  exercised,  not 
in  warding  off,  but  in  punishing  and  cutting  out,  variations. . 
The  initiative  has  always  been  taken,  not  by  herself,  but  by 
errors  and  heresies  within  her  bounds  that  compelled  her  to 
speak ;  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  every  council  has 
been  called,  exexy  Papal  edict  issued,  because  Catholicitij  had 
alreadij  been  lost.  And  the  remedy  was  always  the  same, — a 
long  struggle  of  parties,  for  ascendency,  ending  in  a  short  and . 

AI    2 


164  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

sharp  amputation  of    the    weaker.      So  frequently  has  this 
process  been  renewed,  and  so  brief  have  been  the  intervening 
terms  of  rest,  that,  prior  to  the  last  centmy,  scarcel}^  can  a 
half-century  be  named  during  which  the  Church  has  not  had 
a  divided  life  on  some  question  ultimately  settled   by  authori- 
tative definition.     To  give  instances  is  little  else  than  to  set 
down  the  heads  of  all  ecclesiastical  history,  from  the  quarto- 
deciman  controversy  of  Polycarp  and  Anicetus  at  Eome,  a.d. 
160,  which  left  Asia  Minor  and  Italy  with  different  Easter 
usages,   to   the   condemnation   of  Fenelon's    "  Maximes  des 
Saints,"  in  1699.     Heresy,  it  must  be  remembered,  is  a  pro- 
duct of  the  Church,  and,  ere  it  could  be  excommunicated,  has 
been  in  communion,  often  with  such  tenacity  as  to  leave  it 
doubtful  for  a  whole  generation  what  hand  would  carry  off  the 
banner  of  orthodoxy.     The  great  ecclesiastical  heroes  won  all 
their  victories  over  fellow-disciples, — Tertullian  over  Praxias, 
Athanasius  over  Arius,  Augustine  over  Pelagius,  Cyril  over 
Nestorius,  Hincmar  over  Gottschalk :  the  battle-ground  was 
within  the  sacred  enclosure,  and  its  discordant  din  mingled 
with  the  hymns  of  worshippers.     A  visitor  to  Phrygia  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  second  century  would  hear  nothing  but  of 
the  Paraclete  and  the  millennium ;    returning  to  Piome,  he 
finds  that  type  of  Christianity  condemned.     Crossing  to  the 
schools  of  Alexandria,  he  listens  to  a  mystic  doctrine  of  Christ's 
divine  nature,  in  which  his  human  history  seems  to  melt  into 
a  bright  cloud  ;  removing  to  Antioch,  he  recovers  the  humanity 
again,  and  hears  the  clearest  lessons  drawn  from  the  sacred 
life  in  Palestine  ;  but  is  put  off  with  only  a  poor  account  of 
the  higher  essence  of  the  Son  of  God.     A  lapsed  Christian  of 
the  third  century,  who  in   Spain  would  be  driven  from  the 
church-door,  had  only  to  take  shij)  for  Italy  to  find  entrance 
into  communion  again.     The  long  strife  between  the  Latin 
and  the  Gothic  theology ;  the  yet  longer  between  Piome  and 
Constantinople  ;    the  swaying  to  and  fro  of  the  eucharistic 
doctrine    for    two    centuries,    till,    by   the    condemnation   of 
Berengar   in    1050,    transubstantiation    won   its   place ;    the 
Albigensian  crusade  ;  the  rival  schools  of  Scotus  and  Aquinas  ; 
the  polemic  passages  about  the  immaculate  conception,  about 
indulgences  for  the  dead,  about  the  seat  of  supreme  ecclesiastic 


Chap.  I.]         THE   CATHOLICS   AND    THE    CHURCH  165 

power  ;  the  divisions  on  grace  and  free  will,  first  between 
Dominicans  and  Molinists,  then  between  Jesuits  and  Jansen- 
istS; — all  these  things  must  be  forgotten  before  the  claim  of 
Catholic  concurrence  can  be  pressed  with  any  avail  in  evidence 
of  an  internal  peace  supernaturally  secured.  Nay,  what  more 
do  we  require  for  the  just  estimate  of  this  claim  than  the 
spectacle  of  the  ancient  Church  in  Europe  since  the  A^atican 
council  of  1870 "?  Whither  must  we  go  to  hear  the  veritable 
voice  of  the  traditional  consensus  ?  Must  we  mingle  with  the 
Genevan  Catholics,  and  listen  at  the  feet  of  Father  Hya- 
cinthe '?  Or  kneel  before  the  altar  of  some  "  Old  Catholic" 
church,  and  give  ourselves  to  the  word  of  Dollinger  or  Ehein- 
kens  ?  Or  mingle  with  the  acquiescent  multitude,  that  will 
swear  to  any  words,  contradict  any  history,  betray  any  inherited 
trust,  so  long  as  they  are  covered  by  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  ? 
The  illusory  nature  of  a  "  universality  "  that  breaks  in  pieces, 
and  then  allows  a  fragment  to  label  itself  as  the  whole,  in 
virtue,  not  of  identical  essence,  but  of  greater  size,  is  in  our 
time  laid  bare  before  the  eyes  of  all  the  living. 

4.  Finally,  for  the  last  "note  "  of  divine  authority  we  are 
referred  to  the  "  apostolicity  "  of  the  Church.  If  this  word 
were  meant  only  to  mark  the  historical  origin  of  the  Church 
from  the  labours  of  its  first  missionaries,  it  would  express  no 
more  than  an  indisputable  fact ;  Ijut  it  is  intended  to  denote 
"  conformity  with  its  original  power,  the  mission  and  institu- 
tion of  the  apostles,"*  and  to  claim  the  sanction  of  apostolic 
example  for  the  creed  and  cultus,  the  constitution  and  ad- 
ministration, of  the  Church.  For  persons  of  historical  culture 
to  put  forth  such  a  claim  for  the  first  time  in  an  historical 
age  would  exceed  the  measure  even  of  ecclesiastical  courage, 
so  utterly  fictitious  is  the  picture  of  Christian  antiquity,  and 
so  uncritical  the  reading  of  the  early  Christian  memorials 
which  it  implies.  It  is  a  formula  which  lingers  on,  like  an 
inherited  casket  emptied  of  treasures,  from  a  time  when  so 
much  only  of  Scripture  and  history  were  quoted  as  might 
seem  to  give  some  colour  to  orthodoxy,  and  some  support 
to  a  theocracy.     Hardly  can  a  more  pervading  contrast  l)e 

*  The  Temporal  ^Mission  of   the  Holy  Ghost.     By  Henry  Edward,  Arch- 
bishop of  Westminster.     P.  G9. 


l66  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

ionncl  than  between  the  primitive  and  the  mediaeval  Chris- 
tianity which  are  here  identified.  I  do  not  refer  to  the 
accidents  of  time  and  person  alone,  striking  as  these  will  ever 
be  to  the  popular  imagination, — to  the  poverty  of  apostles 
and  the  princely  magnificence  of  pontiffs, — to  the  simple 
prayer-meetings  of  the  upper  chamber  at  Jerusalem  or  the 
proseucha  at  Philippi,  compared  with  the  splendid  scenery 
and  pompous  offices  of  the  Roman  basilicas, — to  the  fraternal 
simplicity  of  the  scriptural  lessons,  so  unlike  the  Papal  l^ulls, 
in  which  an  over-acted  humility  transparently  covers  an 
assumption  more  than  royal.  These  difterences,  and  more 
than  these,  may  be  conceded  to  the  transition  from  an  incip- 
ient to  a  reigning  Church.  But  far  deeper  than  these,  in  the 
fundamental  conceptions  of  the  religion  itself,  and  in  the 
whole  spirit  and  tendency  of  its  administration,  there  is  an 
essential  opposition  between  its  first  and  its  last  stages.  The 
early  gospel  was  the  escape — gradual  in  the  Petrine  circle, 
taken  at  a  bound  in  the  Pauline — of  the  free  prophetic  spirit 
from  ritual  and  sacerdotal  restraints  :  the  Catholic  Church  is 
the  re-enthronement  of  a  priesthood  over  the  world.  The 
former  accepted  no  mediator  except  One  who  came  to  abolish 
mediation,  and  himself  withdrew  to  heaven,  that  there  might 
be  no  distraction  from  the  divinest  Presence :  the  latter 
appropriated  the  open  treasury  of  grace,  and  kept  the  key, 
and  set  itself  up  as  sole  agent  in  divine  affairs.  The  one 
proclaimed,  that,  as  instruments  of  peace  with  God,  oblations 
and  atonements  had  vanished  from  the  earth,  snatched  away 
by  the  ascending  Christ ;  and  that,  with  him,  humanity  itself 
had  passed  into  the  Holy  of  holies  :  the  other  rebuilt  the 
altar,  invented  a  new  offering,  arranged  the  sacramental 
train,  and  restored  the  daily  sacrifice.  The  one  rent  away 
the  veil  of  untrustful  fear  that  interposed  between  the  private 
soul  and  God,  and  sent  the  conscience  charged  with  sin  to 
breathe  its  prayer,  and  shed  its  tears,  within  the  Divine 
embrace  itself;  the  other  established  the  confessor's  box  in 
every  temple,  and  enjoined  its  occupant  to  find  its  way  into 
every  home.  Who  will  tell  me  that  the  apostle  Paul  was 
a  pontiff?  that  he  confessed  Aquila  and  Priscilla  ?  that  he 
elevated  the  host  at  the  Corinthian  supper,  and  withheld  the 


Chap.  I.]        THE   CATHOLICS  AND    THE   CHURCH.  167 

cup  from  the  in-ofane  ?  It  is  no  wonder  that  to  his  Galatian 
and  Ptoman  Epistles  the  mind  of  Luther,  in  its  first  revolt 
from  the  existing  system,  flew  for  refuge,  and  that  there  he 
found  an  indomitable  strength  ;  for,  within  tlie  whole  com- 
pass of  thought  and  feeling  on  divine  things,  there  is  hardly 
to  be  found  a  more  precise  and  radical  contrarietj'  than 
between  the  spiritual  gospel  of  their  author  and  the  priestly 
system  that  takes  his  name  in  vain. 

Even  without  pressing  this  extreme  contrast,  we  find  no 
evidence,  in  either  the  memorials  of  other  apostles,  or  the 
writings  of  the  next  age,  of  any  likeness  between  the  Papal 
Church  and  its  presumed  prototype.  Besides  Paul's  striking 
sketch  of  the  mode  of  celebrating  the  communion  at  Corinth,* 
we  have  other  notices  of  the  Christian  usages  in  their  re- 
ligious assemblies,  carrying  us  forward  into  the  next  century. 
Let  any  one  read  Pliny's  letter  to  Trajan,!  and  fix  in  his  mind 
the  image  of  the  simple  meeting  there  described,  of  the  alter- 
nate hymn  to  Christ  at  daybreak,  of  the  mutual  engagement 
to  innocent  and  holy  life,  of  the  common  meal  in  pledge  of 
brotherhood ;  let  him  turn  to  the  later  and  fuller  picture, 
drawn  by  Justin  Martyr,!  of  the  l)aptismal  or  the  Sunday 
assembly,  the  reading,  the  exhortation  from  the  presiding 
brother,  the  prayer,  the  distril)ution  of  bread  and  wine,  the 
alms,  and  the  visit  to  the  poor  and  solitary  ;  and,  with  these 
scenes  in  his  mind,  place  him  in  view  of  the  altar  of  St. 
Peter's  at  the  celebration  of  high  mass.  Will  he  see  in  the 
drama  before  him — in  its  vestments,  its  incense,  its  genu- 
flections, its  signal-bell,  its  wafer  for  the  church  and  its  cup 
for  the  altar  —  a  reproduction  of  that  early  communion? 
Will  the  gorgeous  symbols  tell  their  tale,  and  speak  to  his 
heart  the  things  that  he  knows,  and  seem  only  to  glorify  the 
genius  of  his  religion  '?  Or  will  they  look  like  the  language  of 
quite  another  story,  in  which  those  Bithynian  and  Ephesian 
disciples  could  play  no  part,  and  the  apostles  who  established 
their  usages  would  be  strangely  out  of  place?  Perhaps  it 
must  always  be  the  fate  of  a  new  spiritual  life,  infused  from 
purer  heights  of  inspiration,  to  droop  into  lower  levels  when 

*  1  Cor.  xi.  20-33.  t  C.  Pliuius  Traj.  Imp.     Lib.  x.  Ep.  OG. 

J  Jubt.  Phil,  ct  Mart.  Apologia,  i.  cli.  G5-G7. 


i68  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

the  first  divine  impulse  ceases  to  sustain  it,  and  it  passes  into 
the  custody  of  a  less  responsible  humanity.  But,  in  the 
genealogy  of  degenerating  ideas,  there  is  nothing  more  mar- 
vellous and  more  humiliating  than  that  Christ  and  his  first 
missionary  band  should  be  held  responsible  for  the  vastest 
hierarchy,  the  most  theocratic  absolutism,  the  completest 
sacramental  system,  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  That 
which  they  chiefly  lived  to  destroy  has  found  its  way  back 
into  existence,  and  flaunts  their  names  upon  its  banner  as  the 
sanction  of  its  boldest  claims. 

It  is  needless,  at  present,  to  ask  whether,  if  the  pretension 
to  apostolicity  were  made  out,  the  model  on  which  the  Church 
had  framed  itself  could  claim,  on  that  accomit,  to  be  alto- 
gether divine.  That  is  a  question  still  in  reserve ;  and 
without  reference  to  it  the  proof  appears  to  me  complete, 
that  the  Church  is  no  exception  to  the  rule  of  mixed 
agency — divine  and  human — which  runs  through  all  his- 
tory ;  that  within  its  enclosure,  as  without,  truth  and  error, 
holiness  and  guilt,  the  spirit  of  God  and  the  passions  of 
men,  are  blended  into  one  tissue,  and  spread  out  together 
the  pattern  of  the  ages.  To  separate  these  opposites,  it  is 
vain  to  make  mechanical  divisions,  and  draw  boundary  lines 
in  time  or  space,  and  say  to  those  who  are  seeking  con- 
secrated ground,  "  Lo,  here  !  and  Lo,  there  !"  as  if  you  could 
turn  them  into  a  fold  secured  by  a  patent  of  inviolable 
sanctity.  Other  tests  are  needed, — to  apply  which  is  no 
survej^or's  task,  but  a  work  of  inward  apprehension,  of  moral 
analysis,  and  spiritual  discrimination.  There  are  always 
plenty  of  people  ready  to  take  this  trouble  off  your  hands ; 
and  you  can  escape  it,  if  3'ou  are  so  minded,  but  only  with 
this  result :  if  the  insight  of  conscience  is  dispensed  from 
determining  your  religion,  your  religion  ceases  to  be  security 
for  your  conscience. 


169 


CHAPTER  IL 

THE    PROTESTANTS    AND    THE    SCRIPTURES. 

If,  somewhere  among  the  communities  of  Christendom, 
there  is  a  sovereign  prescription  for  securing  "  salvation,"  the 
Roman  Cathohc  Church  has  obvious  advantages  over  its 
competing  claimants  for  possession  of  the  secret.  Regarded 
merely  as  an  agent  for  the  transmission  of  an  historical 
treasure,  she  has  at  least  a  ready  answer  for  all  her  Western 
rivals,  and  -a,  pvimd  facie  case  of  her  own.  They  have,  to  all 
appearance,  quite  a  recent  genesis,  their  whole  tradition  and 
literature  lying  within  the  last  three  centuries  and  a  half ; 
and,  in  order  to  make  good  their  title-deed  as  servitors  of 
Christ,  they  must  carry  it  over  a  period  four  times  as  long, 
during  which  it  was  lost,  and  identify  it  at  the  other  end  with 
the  original  instrument  of  bequest.  Her  plea,  on  the  other 
hand,  is,  that  she  has  been  there  all  through  ;  that  there  has 
been  no  suspension  of  her  life,  no  break  in  her  history,  no 
term  of  silence  in  her  teaching ;  that,  having  been  always 
in  possession,  she  is  the  vehicle  of  every  claim,  and  must  be 
presumed,  till  conclusive  evidence  of  forfeiture  is  produced,  to 
be  the  rightful  holder  of  what  has  rested  in  her  custody.  If  you 
would  trace  a  divine  legacy  from  the  age  of  the  Caesars,  would 
you  set  out  to  meet  it  on  the  Protestant  tracks,  which  soon 
lose  themselves  in  the  forests  of  Germany,  or  the  Alps  of 
Switzerland '?  or,  on  the  great  Roman  road  of  histor}-,  which 
runs  through  all  the  centuries,  and  sets  you  down  in  Greece 
or  Asia  Minor,  at  the  ver}^  doors  of  the  churches  to  which 
apostles  wrote  ? 

But  it  is  not  only  to  its  superiority  as  the  human  carrier  of 
a  divine  tradition,  that  Catholicism  successfully  appeals.  It 
is  not  content  to  hide  away  its  signs  and  wonders  in  the  past, 
and  merely  tell  them  to  the  present,  but  will  take  you  to  see 
them  now  and  here.  It  speaks  to  you,  not  as  the  repeater  of 
an  old  message  but  as  the  bearer  of  a  living  inspiration  ;  not 


I70  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

as  the  archfeological  rebuilder  of  a  vanished  sacred  scene,  but 
as  an  apostoHc  age  prolonged  with  i-inal3ated  powers.     It  tells 
you,  indeed,  whence  it  comes ;   but,  for  evidence  even  of  this, 
it  chiefly  asks  you  to   look  at  icliat  it  is,  and  undertakes  to 
show  you,  as  you  pass   through   its   interior,  all  the  divine 
marks,  be  they  miraculous  gifts  or  heavenly  graces,  by  which 
the  primitive  Church  was  distmguished  from  the  unconsecrated 
world.     This  quiet  confidence  in  its  own  divine  commission 
and  interior  sanctity  simplifies  the  problem  wliich  it  presents 
to   inquirers,    and,  dispensing  with   the    precarious  pleas  of 
learning,  carries  it  into  the  court  of  sentiment  and  conscience, 
addressmg  to  each  candidate  for  discipleship  only  such  pre- 
liminaries as  Peter  or  Philip  might  have  addressed  to  their 
converts, — as   if    there   had   been   no   history   between.     No 
Protestant  can  assume  this  position ;  yet  he  can  hardly  assail 
the  Pioman  Catholic  without  resorting  to  weapons  of  argument 
which  may  wound   himself.     Does   he  slight   and   deny  the 
supernatural  pretensions  of  today, — the  visions,  the  healings, 
the  saintl}'  gifts  of  insight  and  guidance  more  than  human  ? 
It  is  diflicult  to  do  so  except  on  grounds  more  or  less  applicable 
to  the  primitive  reports  of  like  phenomena  in  the  first  age. 
Does   he   insist   on   the   evident   growth,    age    after    age,    of 
Catholic  dogma,  as  evidence  of  human  corruption  tainting  the 
divine  inheritance  of  truth '?     The  rule  tells  with  equal  force 
against  the  scheme  of  belief  retained  by  the  churches  of  the 
Pieformation  :  there   is  a  histor}-,  not   less  explicit  and  pro- 
longed, of    the    doctrine    of    the    Trinity    and    the    Atone- 
ment, than  of  the  l)elief  in  Purgatory  and  Transubstantiation. 
Does  he  show  that  there  are  missing  links   in  the  chain  of 
church  tradition,  especially  at  its  upper  end,  where  verification 
ceases  to  be  possible  ?     He  destroys  his  own  credentials  along 
with  his  opponents'  ;  for  his  criticism  touches  the  very  sources 
of  Christian  history. 

The  answer  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  the  question,  "  Wliere 
is  the  holy  ground  of  the  world  ?  "VVliere  is  the  real  presence 
of  the  living  God  ?  " — "  Here,  within  my  precincts,  here 
alone," — has  at  least  the  merit  of  simplicity,  and  is  easier  to 
test  than  the  Protestant  repl}',  which  points  to  a  field  of  divine 
revelation,  discoverable  only  by  the  telescope,  half-way  towards 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  171 

the  horizon  of  history.  It  has  no  absolute  need  to  make  its 
title  good  by  links  of  testimony  running  back  to  far-off 
sources  of  prerogative  ;  no  age  of  miracles  to  reach  and 
historically  prove,  as  a  condition  of  its  rights  today.  It 
carries  its  supernatural  character  within  it ;  it  has  brought 
its  authority  doAvn  with  it  through  time;  it  is  the  living 
organism  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Pentecostal  dispensation 
among  us  still ;  and,  if  you  ask  about  its  evidence,  it  offers 
the  spectacle  of  itself.  Though  it  is  the  oldest  of  churches, 
it  asks  recognition  by  credentials  of  the  passing  hour. 
Though  it  alone  has  lived  through  all  Christian  history,  it 
least  affects  an  antiquarian  pomp,  knowing  no  difference 
between  what  has  been  and  what  is,  and  in  its  retreat  from 
the  movement  of  the  world  being  hardly  conscious  of  the 
lapse  of  time.  Itself  the  sacred  enclosure  of  whatever  is 
di\'ine  and  supernatural  on  earth,  it  has  no  problems  to  solve, 
no  legitimacy  to  make  out,  no  doctrine  to  prove,  but  simply 
to  live  on,  and  witness  of  the  grace  it  bears. 

To  the  Protestant,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  spot 
railed  off  from  modern  life  as  absolutely  sacred,  no  continuous 
vehicle  of  inspiration,  no  personal  or  corporate  authority  for 
the  supernatural  guidance  of  mankind.  To  him,  revelation 
is  an  inheritance.  During  one  privileged  generation  it  flowed 
from  living  lips  :  but  afterwards,  passing  into  a  mere  record 
that  could  never  grow,  it  became  more  and  more  deeply 
buried  amid  the  natural  products  of  historical  experience. 
Thus,  for  him,  the  divine  and  human  are  everywhere  mixed, 
and  need  the  application  of  thought  and  conscience  to  sever 
them.  He  finds  himself,  with  his  religion,  in  the  eddying 
currents  of  the  recent  ages,  and  feels  their  conflicting  forces 
meeting  in  his  mind.  He  has  been  borne  along  by  them  to 
points  so  little  suspected,  that  he  looks  round  to  discover 
wdiere  he  is,  and,  according  to  his  mood,  is  sometimes 
enamoured,  sometimes  frightened,  l)y  the  aspect  of  a  position 
so  new.  How  does  he  stand  with  regard  to  the  old  land- 
marks '?  or,  if  they  are  gone  out  of  sight,  can  he  still  find 
his  way  ?  Is  he  to  seek  guidance  ])y  going  to  the  standards 
half  effaced,  or  by  looking  round  for  himself  upon  the  present, 
and  choosing  the  path  of  clearest  promise  '?     No  one  who 


172  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

measures  the  changes  of  the  world  can  be  surprised  at  this 
perplexity.  The  faith  of  Christendom,  essentially  historical, 
has  inherited  its  clearest  memories  from  its  primitive  times, 
and  turned  towards  them  a  gaze  of  regretful  homage ;  but 
thrown  into  the  contests  of  the  passing  hour,  and  co-existing 
since  the  Keformation  with  an  unexampled  progress  of  dis- 
covery, it  could  not  remain  purely  retrospective,  the  passive 
trustee  of  departed  sanctities.  It  was  impelled  to  learn  the 
language  of  a  new  time,  and  show  its  unexhausted  fitness  for 
the  human  soul,  if  it  would  vindicate  its  place  in  a  universe 
so  changed.  This  self-adaptation  to  the  wants  of  a  later 
culture  created  the  whole  religious  literature,  and  much  of 
the  speculative  philosophy,  of  modern  Europe.  Natural 
science,  crowned  with  dazzling  triumphs,  affected  every 
department  of  thought  with  admiration  of  her  precise 
method  and  her  favourite  evidence  of  sense ;  and  religion 
became  fascinated,  and  undertook  to  shape  itself  into  logical 
and  objective  form.  The  increase  of  social  liberty  gave  a 
wider  scope  to  every  man's  free  will,  and  a  deeper  experience 
of  responsibility  ;  and  no  appeal  on  behalf  of  religion  became 
so  effective  as  that  which  spoke  of  its  adaptation  to  the 
wants  of  tempted  and  aspiring  men.  In  thus  availing  itself  of 
modern  auxiliaries,  Christianity  receded  from  the  high  ground 
of  ancient  authority,  and  descended  into  the  field  of  intellec- 
tual conflict.  Rationalistic  tests  were  applied  to  its  whole 
structure  and  contents.  Believers  being  encouraged  to  pass 
judgment  on  their  beliefs,  doubters  could  be  denied  the  privi- 
lege no  longer  :  hence  the  two  contrasted  tendencies  observabl  d 
in  the  religious  feeling  of  our  day,  in  answer  to  the  question, 
"Forwards,  or  backwards?"  All  churches  that  by  the  toil 
of  venerable  men  have  got  together  a  body  of  established 
doctrine  show  symptoms  of  apprehension  ;  all  of  them  refus- 
ing to  advance  ;  some  insisting  on  the  one  impossible  attitude 
of  standing  still ;  and  others,  like  men  weakened  by  the  fear 
of  death,  terrified  into  open  repentance,  and  vowing,  if  they 
may  only  be  spared,  to  retrace  their  steps,  and  yield  to  the 
temptation  of  thought  no  more.  These  last  plainly  disown 
the  Reformation  ;  would  put  back  the  clock  to  the  night  of 
Luther's  birth,  and  reconvert  the  Bible  into  a  sacerdotal  trust, 


Chap.  II. J      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  173 

thinking  it  easier  to  root  out  the  whole  produce  of  that  great 
era  than  to  leave  it  growing,  yet  prevent  its  spreading.  In 
its  feebler  forms,  the  same  reaction,  without  the  support  of 
any  consistent  theory,  simply  appeals  to  taste,  and  avails 
itself  of  the  resources  of  ecclesiastical  symbolism.  Men  who 
cannot  find  sufficient  assurance  to  play  the  priest,  or  forget 
themselves  enough  to  cast  out  Satan,  can  sigh  over  "  neology," 
warn  off  human  reason  from  the  sanctuary  as  if  it  was  some 
destructive  maniac,  and  invoke  historical  veneration  to  seize 
and  manacle  the  fiend.  It  is  the  dream  of  these  archaeologi- 
cal Christians  to  restore  some  golden  period  of  the  Church, 
and  b}'  reproducing  the  forms,  to  tempt  back  the  thought  and 
characteristics  of  "  the  good  old  times ;  "  and  doctrines  and 
practices  are  judged,  not  by  their  truth  and  worth  to  the 
living,  but  by  the  standard  perceptions  of  dead  men  centuries 
out  of  reach.  The  present  is  looked  upon  as  degenerate  and 
profane ;  and,  to  correct  its  tendencies,  old  literature  is 
republished,  early  art  revived,  and  traditional  models  of  life 
are  re-animated,  as  if  the  stone  figures  upon  the  tombs 
opened  their  folded  hands,  rose  up,  and  walked.  ^Miatever  is 
beautiful,  magnificent,  and  tender  in  the  worship,  the  architec- 
ture, the  sacred  biography,  of  the  mediaeval  church,  whatever 
was  benign  and  picturesque  in  the  sway  of  a  mild  priesthood 
controlling  a  barbarous  nobility,  whatever  is  captivating  m 
the  idea  of  a  peasantry  surrendered  to  the  guidance  of  a 
beneficent  and  cultivated  clergy,  is  brought  so  persuasively  to 
view,  that  we  feel  as  if,  in  passing  from  our  forefathers'  time 
into  our  own,  we  stepped  from  the  cool  silence  of  a  cathedral 
to  the  hot  chaftering  of  the  street.  In  short,  everything  is 
done  to  incline  us  to  trust  in  the  past,  and  distrust  the 
present.  And  thus  has  been  provoked  into  activity  the  oppo- 
site disposition,  to  repudiate  as  obsolete  our  spiritual  heritage 
from  the  past ;  to  begin  afresh,  and  live  today  as  if  it  were 
alone  in  time  :  to  breathe  the  morning  air  as  if  it  were  new- 
born, instead  of  sweeping  down  the  Alpine  valleys,  and  across 
the  purifying  seas,  of  another  zone.  "We  are  asked  to  set 
aside  the  divinest  influences  transmitted  to  us  by  history,  as 
impertinent  obtrusions  l)etween  the  soul  and  God,  and  retire 
wholly  to  the  oracle  witliin.  for  ]irivate  audience  with  God. 


174  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Both  these  tendencies,  as  often  happens  with  extremes,,  are, 
I  should  say,  right  in  their  love,  wrong  in  their  hate ;  their 
negative  spirit,  false  ;  their  affirmative,  true.  The  historic 
God  and  the  living  God  are  alike  realities,  the  same  Eternal, 
there  and  here ;  and  only  when  his  recognition  in  one  aspect 
is  interpreted  into  denial  of  the  other,  does  his  oracle  become 
apocryphal,  and  his  worship  an  idolatry.  This  artificial  con- 
trariety, however,  has  been  established  by  the  narrowness  of 
men ;  and  imposes  on  us  the  inquiry,  whether,  in  the  drama 
of  the  past,  we  meet  with  any  episode  purely  divine,  and  step 
upon  absolutely  consecrated  ground ;  whether  especially  the 
apostolic  age,  with  its  productions,  really  merits  the  pedestal 
of  exceptional  infallibility,  whence  it  is  made  to  pour  rebuke 
on  the  profane  tendencies  of  modern  life. 

According  to  the  Protestant's  theory,  divine  revelation  is 
permanent  only  in  its  effects.  In  itself  it  is  a  past  transac- 
tion, supernaturally  interpolated  in  the  history  of  mankind, 
and  completed  in  the  first  century  of  our  era.  From  that 
era,  the  source  for  him  of  all  divine  authority,  he  is  now 
separated  by  threescore  generations  ;  and  whatever  is  true  in 
heavenly  things,  whatever  is  holy,  must  cross  that  interval 
ere  its  tones  can  reach  him.  For  his  knowledge  of  it,  he  is  de- 
pendent on  its  records,  created  by  the  first  actors  or  observers 
on  that  sacred  stage,  and  handed  down  by  successive  witnesses 
of  their  identity  :  and  it  is  only  as  native  to  that  age,  and 
stereotyping  its  inspired  voice,  that  the  Christian  Scriptures 
speak  to  him  as  "  the  word  of  God."  Could  he  suppose  them 
to  have  been  born  outside  that  circle  of  special  revelation  in 
place  or  time,  to  be  the  production  only  of  impersonal  rumour, 
or  a  secondary  age,  his  reliance  on  them  would  be  gone,  and 
they  would  descend  from  their  consecrated  height  to  mingle 
with  the  mass  of  human  literature.  His  first  essential,  there- 
fore, is  to  trace  them  clearly  home  to  that  exceptional  period, 
and  to  the  body  of  first  disciples  within  it.  If  this  be  once 
secured,  all  else  appears  to  him  readily  to  follow.  Does  the 
New  Testament  which  we  read  today  really  come  from  the 
group  of  apostolic  men  who  turned  the  death  of  Christ  into 
the  birth  of  Christendom  ?  Then  is  it  a  faithful  record  ;  for 
its  authors  have  every  title  to  be  believed,  which  ample  oppor- 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AXD    THE   SCRIPTURES.  175 

tnnity  and  disinterested  sacrifice  can  ^vin.     But  further  :  if  it 
is  faithful  in  its  account  of  facts,  it  is  authoritative  in  its 
statement    of    doctrines ;  for  among  the    facts    are    various 
miracles,    imparting   a   superhuman    character   to  the   chief 
figure  of  the  story,  and  specially  a  direct  descent  of  inspiration 
on  his  first  missionaries,  which  made  them  vehicles  of  a  testi- 
mony higher  than  their  own,  and  which  guarantees  the  truth,, 
not  of  their  narrative  alone,  but  of  their  whole  course  of  religious 
thought  and  teaching.     And  so  is  forged  a  three-linked  argu- 
ment which  joms  divine  and  human  things :  if  the  facts  are  real, 
the  doctrines  are  certain ;  if  the  books  are  authentic,  the  facts 
are  real ;  thatthebooks  are  authentic,  adequate  testimony  proves. 
There  may,  perhaps,  be  logical  devotees  whose  enthusiasm 
loves  to  reach  their  God  by  long  and  painful  pilgrimages  of 
thought ;  but  it  would  not  be  a  happy  thing  for  natures  of 
more  direct  and  impatient  affection  to  be  left  thus  dependent 
for  knowledge  of  divine  things  on  literary,  antiquarian,  philo- 
logical evidence,  judicially  balanced,  analogous  to  that  which 
scholars  cite  in  discussing  the  Homeric  poems,  or  the  Letters 
of  Phalaris.     We  are  not  permitted,   it  would  seem,   to  take 
our  sacred  literature  as  it  is,  to  let  what  is  divine  in  it  find  us 
out,  while  the  rest  says  nothing  to  us,  and  lies  dead  :  all  such 
selection    by  internal  affinity   is   denied   us  as   a    self-willed 
unbelief,  a   subjection,  not   of  ourselves  to  Scripture,  but  of 
Scripture  to  ourselves.     We  are  required  to  accept  the  whole 
on  the  external  warrant  of  its  divine  authority,  which  equally 
applies  to  it  all ;  to  believe  whatever  is  affirmed  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  practise  whatever  is  enjoined.     In  escaping 
by  this  path  from  the  Catholic  Church,  we  are  merely  handed 
over  from  an  ever-living  dictator  and    judge  to  an  ancient 
legislation  and  guidance,   still  with  the  same  idea   of  some- 
M'here   disengaging  ourselves   from  human  admixtures,    and 
finding  some  reserved  seat  of  the  purely  and  absolutely  divine. 
Neatly  as  the  Protestant  argument  is  compacted,  it  will  not 
bear  the  strain  which  is  put  upon  it.     Each   of  its  links  is  in 
fact  unsound.     And,  even  though  no  flaw  were  visible  in  them, 
still  the  conclusion  is  demonstral)ly  false. 

How  far  have  we,  in  the  Christian  Scriptures,  the  testimony 
of  eye-witnesses  to  the  events  and  teachings  which  they  relate  ? 


176  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

If  direct  and  rigorous  proof  were  required,  it  would  be 
impossible  ever  to  trace  a  book  on  our  shelves  today  to  the 
hand  of  a  specified  man  in  ancient  Athens,  or  Eome,  or 
Jerusalem.  Even  productions  prepared  for  immediate  public 
recital  by  their  authors,  like  the  Histories  of  Herodotus,  the 
Odes  of  Pindar,  the  Orations  of  Cicero,  speak  to  us  out  of 
darkness  and  silence  ;  and  the  multitudes  that  heard  them  at 
the  games,  or  in  the  forum,  have  vanished  without  a  vestige 
left ;  and  there  is  no  voice  among  them  all  to  vouch  for  the 
identit3\  Still  less  can  we  expect  that  writings  published  only 
by  the  copyist  should  be  attended  from  the  first  by  their  own 
credentials ;  with  the  Dialogues  of  Plato,  the  Treatises  of 
Aristotle,  the  Annals  of  Tacitus,  we  look  for  the  signature  of 
no  witnesses,  the  seal  of  no  notary.  Far  less  than  this 
suffices,  in  all  ordinary  cases,  to  make  us  as  sure  of  our  author 
as  if  we  bought  the  book  from  his  own  advertisement.  If  it 
is  mentioned  and  cited  as  his,  while  he  still  lives  to  own  or  to 
disclaim  it ;  if  its  influence  is  visible  in  the  immediately 
succeeding  literature,  like  that  of  Lucretius,  or  Catullus,  or 
Virgil,  though  without  notice  of  his  name  ;  if,  from  his  own 
time  onwards,  it  passes  for  his  without  question  in  the  presence 
of  a  critical  age, — we  accept  the  confidence  of  others  as  a 
ground  for  our  own.  The  presumption  is  in  favour  of  a  book 
being  in  its  authorship  what  it  professes  to  be ;  and  whoever 
would  deprive  it  of  the  benefit  of  this  rule  must  produce  some 
counter-evidence,  from  its  history  or  from  its  contents,  at 
variance  with  its  pretensions.  In  the  vast  majority  of 
instances  we  proceed  wholly  on  this  presumption,  and 
unhesitatingly  repeat  in  our  libraries  the  labels  which  have 
come  down  to  us  unchallenged ;  and,  however  puzzled  we 
might  be  to  prove  our  accuracy  in  any  particular  case,  e.g.,  to 
establish  off-hand  the  literary  rights  of  Erasmus  or  Montaigne, 
our  general  habit  is  undoubted^  justified  by  a  prevailing 
experience,  which  it  sums  up  and  applies.  Yet  an  indolent 
confidence  in  such  a  rule  may  leave  openmgs  for  mischievous 
and  long-enduring  mistakes,  not  only  in  ages  when  printing 
was  unknown  and  men  of  letters  were  few,  but  in  the  full  day- 
light of  modern  intellectual  intercourse. 

A  curious  example  of  this  is  furnished  in  connection  with 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  177 

Lord  Bacon's  name.  In  164S, — thirteen  years  after  his 
death, — appeared  a  vohime  of  "  Eemahis  of  Francis,  Lord 
Verulam,  some  time  Lord  Chancellor  of  England,"  including, 
among  essays  and  letters  previously  unpuljlished,  a  tract 
entitled  "  The  Character  of  a  Christian,  set  forth  in  Paradoxes 
and  seeming  Contradictions."  In  1730,  Archbishop  Sancroft 
revised  this  essay  for  Blackburn's  edition  of  Bacon's  collected 
works  ;  and  it  has  ever  since  kept  its  place  among  his  writings, 
though  not  without  hesitation  on  the  part  of  some  of  his 
editors, — Montagu,  Bouillet,  and  Spedding.  Except  in  the  last 
instance,  the  doubt  was  not  any  divination  of  literary 
criticism,  but  arose  from  arbitrary  preconceptions  of  Bacon's 
theological  position.  The  piece  opens  thus  :  "  A  Christian 
is  one  who  believes  things  which  his  reason  cannot  compre- 
hend, who  hopes  for  that  which  neither  he  nor  any  man  alive 
ever  saw,  who  labours  for  that  which  he  knows  he  can  never 
attain ;  vet  in  the  issue  his  belief  appears  not  to  have  been 
false,  his  hopes  make  him  not  ashamed,  his  labour  is  not  in 
vain.  He  believes  three  to  1)0  one,  and  one  to  be  three ;  a 
Father  not  to  be  older  than  his  Son,  and  the  Son  to  be  equal 
with  his  Father  ;  and  One  proceeding  from  both  to  be  full}' 
equal  to  both."  To  the  eighteenth-century  imagination  it  was 
inconceivable  that  startling  contradictions  like  these  could  be 
the  grave  expression  of  sincere  religious  faith ;  and  it  is  no 
wonder  that  Bayle,  Cabanis,  and  others  of  the  French  philo- 
sophers, as  well  as  the  Romanist,  Joseph  de  Maistre,*  should 
appeal  to  them  as  an  evidence  that  Bacon  was  an  Atheist, 
veiling  liis  contempt  for  "believing  Christians"  under  a 
colourable  exposition  of  their  creed.  "With  less  excuse  have 
writers  of  our  own  time  reproduced  the  same  construction  ; 
Heinrich  Piitter  treating  the  essay  (which  he  pronounces  au- 
thentic) as  the  "  effusion  of  a  scepticism  afterwards  suppres- 
sed," t  and  Mr.  Atkinson  seeing  only  irony  in  "  the  ridiculous 
light  in  which  he  has  placed  Christian  dogma  in  his  para- 
doxes," and  adding,  that  "  it  seems  equally  vain  to  argue  that 


*  lu   his   Examcu  de  la  Philosophic    dc    BacoD,    2    vols.      Paris :   1836. 
(Posthumous.) 
+  Geschichte  der  Philosophie,  book  x.  p.  318,  1851. 

N 


178  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

they  were  not  his  writmgs,  or  done  only  as  an  exercise  of  his 
wit.* 

The  allusion  in  this  last  clause  is  to  Dr.  Parr's  judgment, 
that  "  these  fragments  were  written  by  Bacon,  and  intended 
only  as  a  trial  of  his  skill  in  putting  together  propositions 
which  appear  irreconcilable."  t  Here,  then,  we  find  a  book 
passing  current  through  two  hundred  and  twenty  years  of  the 
most  recent  history,  under  the  name  of  a  renowned  philosopher, 
popularly  read,  criticized  by  literary  men,  argued  on  by  meta- 
physicians and  the  chiefs  of  science  throughout  Europe,  and 
regularly  admitted  as  an  important  datum  in  the  history  of 
opmion  :  yet,  all  the  while,  this  essay,  which  is  not  Bacon's 
at  all,  existed  in  numerous  printed  editions,  with  the  name  of 
the  real  author,  Herbert  Palmer,  B.D.,  Master  of  Queen's 
College,  Cambridge,  and  a  parliamentary  member  of  the 
Westminster  Assembly  of  Divines.  He  gave  it  to  the  world 
July  25,  1645,  as  a  second  part  of  his  "  Memorials  of  Godli- 
ness and  Christianity,"  with  a  protest  against  a  surreptitious 
and  imperfect  edition  which  had  by  some  means  been  anony- 
mously issued  the  day  before ;  so  that  it  had  been  in  circula- 
tion for  three  years  before  the  appearance  of  Bacon's  "  Ee- 
mains ;  "  and  afterwards  new  editions  continued  to  follow, 
without  availing  to  detect  the  mistake.  Had  Palmer  himself 
been  on  the  stage  when  his  literary  offspring  stepped  forth  in 
philosopher's  garb,  doubtless  be  would  have  stripped  off  the 
borrowed  cloak,  and  shown  the  plain  Puritan  beneath.  But 
he  had  passed  away  in  1647  ;  and  few  of  his  readers,  it  is 
probable,  ever  looked  into  the  pages  of  the  founder  of  the  In- 
ductive Method.  And  so  the  re-discovery  of  the  true  author- 
ship was  reserved  for  the  curious  and  admirable  researches  of 
Dr.  Grosart  within  our  own  times.  \ 

The  tenacity  of  a  literary  illusion  is  increased,  whenever,  in 
addition  to  the  ordinary  sources  of  error,  any  romantic  or 
reverential  feeling  is  enlisted  on  its  side.     Of  this  we  have  a 


*  Letters  on  Man's  Nature  and  Development,  p.  174. 

t  Basil  Montagu's  Bacon,  vol.  vii.  pp.  xxvi.-xxviii. 

X  For  a  full  account  of  this  discovery,  see  his  (privately  printed)  Lord 
Bacon  not  the  Author  of  the  Christian  Paradoxes ;  being  a  Reprint  of  Me- 
morials of  Godliness  and  Christianity  by  Herbert  Palmer,  B.D.     1SC5. 


Chap.  IL]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  179 

memorable  example  pertinently  cited  by  Toland  at  the  end  oi 
the  seventeenth  centmy,  in  the  EIkw^  BuCTtXtKjj,  or  "  Image  of 
a  King,"  a  book  professedly  written  in  his  own  defence,  by 
Charles  L,  during  his  imprisonment,  and  published  in  1649, 
shortly  after  his  execution.  Its  seasonable  appearance,  its 
stately  manner,  its  rhetorical  outpouring  of  pathetic  senti- 
ment, raised  it  somewhat  above  the  level  of  a  party  manifesto, 
and  gave  it  a  strong  hold  upon  public  feeling.  And,  though 
its  authenticity  was  immediately  called  in  question  by  Milton, 
its  almost  universal  reception  was  not  arrested,  and  carried 
it  rapidly  through  nearly  fifty  editions  ;  and  to  its  influence  is 
to  be  attributed,  in  no  small  measure,  the  High-Church  con- 
ception of  the  "Royal  Martyr."  After  the  Eestoration,  the 
spell  of  mystery  was  rudely  broken  ;  and  Dr.  Gauden,  Bishop 
of  Exeter,  avowed  himself  the  author.  But  to  have  the  in- 
terest of  its  story  thus  reduced  to  fiction  was  more  than  loyal 
admirers  could  be  expected  to  bear :  and,  refusing  to  believe 
the  bishop,  they  insisted  on  still  having  the  autobiography  of 
a  king.  And  hence,  when,  in  1699,  Toland,  in  his  "  Life  of 
Milton,"  reproduced  and  corroborated  the  poet's  critical 
judgment,  he  added,  not  without  reason,  this  reflection  :  that 
if  forty  years  of  modern  daylight,  when  criticism  is  awake  and 
keen,  and  conflicting  parties  in  the  state  are  intently  watching 
one  another,  suffice  for  the  establishment  of  such  a  fictitious 
claim,  it  cannot  surprise  us,  that,  in  the  early  Christian  times, 
many  spurious  productions  found  their  way  into  circulation 
under  the  names  of  Christ  and  his  apostles.  When  Blackall, 
replying  to  this  remark  in  a  sermon  before  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, defended  in  the  same  breath,  as  alike  authentic,  the 
Christian  Scriptures  and  the  YAkmv  BatrtAffC)/,  the  ai)positeness 
of  Toland's  historical  parallel  seemed  to  be  admitted  by  both 
parties  ;  and  the  earlier  era  could  be  protected  from  the  sus- 
picion of  mistaken  authenticity  only  by  the  process,  no  longer 
possible,  of  excluding  it  from  the  later. 

In  order  to  fall,  with  whatever  restrictions,  under  tlie  rule 
that,  in  the  absence  of  counter-evidence,  a  book  may  be  as- 
signed to  the  author  from  whom  it  professes  to  come,  it  must 
carry  in  itself  such  profession,  and  must  not  merely  have 
attached  to  it,  byway  of  external  heading  or  description,  some 


i8o  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

repute  of  authorship,  coming  we  know  not  whence.  To 
writings  intrinsically  anonymous  no  unaccredited  rumour, 
however  current  in  the  course  of  years,  can  lend  the  weight  of 
personal  authority  ;  and  rarely  can  we  hope,  if  they  have  pre- 
served their  incognito  through  one  generation,  ever  to  recover 
the  story  of  their  origin,  and  identify  the  pen  that  wrote  them. 
In  their  case,  we  are  thrown  entirely  upon  the  evidence  of  acjc ; 
and,  as  the  most  accurate  determination  of  date  would  still 
leave  us  unacquainted  with  the  witness  whose  statements  are 
before  us,  it  cannot  secure  the  correctness  of  his  testimony,  but 
only  exclude  the  appendix  of  errors  which  tradition  annexes 
with  grooving  time.  To  know  the  birthday  of  a  book  is  still 
a  long  way  from  a  settlement  of  its  parentage. 

Of  the  New  Testament  writings,  six  letters  of  Paul,  viz.,  1  Thes- 
salonians,  Galatians,  Romans,  1  &  2  Corinthians,  Philippians, 
must  have  the  full  benefit  of  the  presumption  which  accepts 
a  book  on  its  own  word.  Here  and  there,  no  doubt,  as  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  letter  to  the  Romans,  a  passage  may  be  found 
with  possible  traces  of  a  later  editorial  hand  ;  but,  in  general, 
the  contents  are  in  perfect  accordance  with  the  reputed  author's 
position  and  character,  so  far  as  these  are  known.  Consider- 
able as  the  differences  are  between  the  earlier  and  the  later 
Pauline  letters,  they  all  find  a  natural  place  in  the  history  of 
a  growing  mind,  and  give  even  a  stronger  impression  of 
personal  unity  than  the  most  constant  reiteration  of  doctrine 
and  illustration.  This  impression  from  within  is  corroborated 
by  such  external  testimony  as  we  have.  True  it  is,  more  than 
a  generation  elapses,  before  we  find  an  allusion,  in  Clement  of 
Rome,  to  the  first  Corinthian  epistle  as  Paul's.  But  this  testi- 
mony, late  as  it  is,  is  the  earliest  which  the  scanty  Christian 
literature  of  the  time  permits  us  to  expect,  and,  being  unop- 
posed, suffices  to  assure  us,  that,  in  this  first  group  of  writings, 
we  are  really  in  contact  with  the  primitive  expression  of  the 
new  faith. 

The  other  epistolary  writings,  which  set  themselves  forth 
under  an  apostolic  name,  remain  unattested  till  the  fourth 
generation  from  the  death  of  Christ,  and  in  nearly  all  of  them 
there  are  such  evident  traces  of  a  post-apostolic  time,  so  many 
thoughts  unsuited  to  the  personality  of  the  reputed  author, 


Chap.  II.l      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  i8i 

that  the  ordmary  favourable  presumption  is  broken  down  ; 
and,  ho^Yeve^  excellent  the  lessons  which  they  contain,  we  must 
confess,  as  we  receive  them,  that  we  listen  to  an  unknown 
voice. 

The   remaining   constituents   of  the   New   Testament,  the 
Apocalypse  and  the  whole  of  the  historical  books,  are,  in  spite 
of  their  traditional  titles,  practically  anonjanous.     They  offer 
us  no  personal  warrant  for  the  accuracy  of  their  contents ;  and 
we  are  left  to  find  out  for  ourselves  the  probable  story  of  their 
origin,  and  the  value  of  their   materials.     This   in   itself  is 
surely  a  startling  fact,  utterly  fatal  to  the  claim  of  infallible 
authority  constantly  set  up  on  behalf  of  Holy  Writ.     How  is 
it  possible  to  prove  a  divine  right  to  be  believed  respecting  a 
book  that  comes  out  of  the  dark,  with  no  competent  witnesses  to 
vouch  for  it,  and  no  self- confession  of  the  hand  that  wrote  it  ? 
On  what  ground  can  we  attach  a  superhuman  weight  to  the 
testimony  of  a  masked  and  veiled  witness,  who  does  not  even 
tell  his  name,  or  say  how  near  he  stands  to  the  things  which 
he  relates  ?     The  evidence  which  he  gives  may  have  more  or 
less  of  credibility,  according  to  its  degree  of  self-consistency,  of 
verisimilitude,  of  apparent  originalit}',  and  of  agreement  with 
parallel  reports  ;  but  it  can  never  acquire  personal  authority, 
or  rise  above  the  level  of  current  tradition.     The  historical 
value  of  this  tradition,  variable  from  section  to  section  of  each 
book,  has  broader  differences  in  the  three   synoptics,  in  the 
fourth  Gospel,  and  in  the  x\cts  of  the  Apostles,  as  will  be 
readily  seen  from  a  brief  summary  of  the  facts  of  each  case. 


§  1.   Tlic  Synoptical  Gospels. 

In  gathering  up  the  most  ancient  vestiges  of  our  Gospels, 
we  find  the  evidence  respecting  them  fall  naturally  into  two 
stages.  In  the  last  quarter  of  the  second  century,  the  notices 
of  them  are  accompanied  by  llicir  names,  which  are  absent 
from  all  prior  citations  of  words  now  extant  in  them.  This 
significant  fact  comes  out  forcibly,  on  comparison  of  Irenasus 
(who  flourished,  says  Jerome,  cliiefl.y  in  the  reign  of  Commodus, 
i.e.,  A.D.  lyO  to  11)8)  and  Justin  Martvr,  whose  extant  writings 


i82  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

were  probably  produced  between  a.d.  147  and  155.*  The 
former  quotes  the  Gospels  under  their  present  titles,  and  gives 
amusing  reasons  why  they  can  be  neither  more  nor  fewer  than 
four ;  and  why  those  Christians  who  use  only  one  must  be  in 
the  wrong :  "  Since  there  are  four  quarters  of  the  world  in 
which  we  are,  and  four  chief  winds,  the  Gospels,  which  are  to 
be  co-extensive  with  the  world,  and  to  be  the  breath  of  life, 
blowing  incorruptibility  on  men,  and  vivifying  them,  must  be 
four."  Besides,  the  gospel  is  given  by  Him  who  sits  above  the 
cherubim,  which  is  a  fourfold  figure  ;  and  it  answers  to  the 
Beasts  in  Eev.  iv.,  which  are  four ;  and  it  must  correspond 
with  God's  covenants  through  Adam,  Noah,  Moses,  and  Christ, 
which  are  four.  "  These  things  being  so,  they  are  all  vain  and 
ignorant  and  rash  men,  who  spoil  the  beauty  of  the  gospel,  and 
decide  on  either  more  or  fewer  forms  of  it  than  have  been  men- 
tioned ;  some,  to  take  credit  for  finding  more  than  the  real 
number  ;  others,  to  reject  the  ordinations  of  men."  t  Irenseus 
was  not  a  wise  man  ;  but  he  would  not  have  resorted  to  this 
fantastic  reasoning,  if  he  had  been  in  possession  of  real  his- 
torical grounds  for  the  statements  he  wished  to  support.  It 
is  clear  that  he  had  nothing  to  tell,  except  that,  by  that  time, 
the  Gospels  which  we  now  have  were  prevailingly  accepted, 
under  the  titles  which  they  have  borne  ever  since,  but  that 
there  were  Christians  who  held  by  some  one  of  them  alone, 
and  others  who  did  not  restrict  themselves  to  four. 

Stepping  back  a  generation,  we  find  in  Justin  Martyr  traces 
of  a  difterent  state  of  things.  In  his  pages  there  are  copious 
citations  both  from  the  Old  Testament  and  from  certain 
Christian  "  memoirs  "  evidently  embodying  the  gospel  history ; 
and,  in  the  latter  case,  there  is  no  difficulty  in  finding  the 
corresponding  passages  in  our  synoptical  Gospels.  But 
whether   it   was  precisely  these  that  he  had  before  him,  is 

*  It  is  usual  to  refer  the  First  Apology  to  the  beginning  of  a.d.  139,  the 
Tryi^ho  to  the  same  year,  the  Second  Apology  to  162  or  163 ;  but  Prof.  Volk- 
mar  appears  to  have  made  out  his  case  for  correcting  this  chronology,  and 
treating  the  Second  Apology  as  a  mere  appendix  to  the  first.  The  whole  of 
Justin's  extant  writings  would  thus  be  subsequent  to  the  time  when  M.  Aure- 
lius  was  raised  to  the  proconsular  power,  and  associated  with  Antoninus  Pius. 
Theologische  Jahrblicher,  von  Baur  und  Zellor,  1855,  S.  227  and  412.  (Die 
Zeit  Justin's  des  ]\Iartyrers  kritisch  untersuclit.) 

f  Ireneeus,  Haer.  iii.  11. 


Chap.  !I.J      PEOTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  183 

rendered  doubtful  by  two  peculiarities.  1.  He  never  names, 
never  alludes  to,  their  authors  or  their  number,  but  quotes 
as  if  from  a  single  anonymous  production.  2.  There  is  a  want 
of  verbal  agreement  with  our  texts,  so  nearly  invariable,  that, 
out  of  a  vast  number  of  passages,  only  five  are  exactly  true  to 
Matthew  or  Luke.  The  contingencies  of  memoriter  citation 
will  not  explain  this  singular  phenomenon ;  for  the  same 
differences  are  constant  through  repeated  quotations  of  the 
same  passage :  they  resemble  remarkably  the  variations 
observed  in  the  Scripture  texts  of  the  Clementine  Homilies,  a 
production  of  the  same  period ;  and  they  differ,  both  in 
frequency  and  in  character,  from  concomitant  inaccuracies  in 
citing  the  Septuagint  version  of  the  Old  Testament,  where  the 
memory  alone  is  answerable.  These  facts  imply  that  Justin 
drew  his  quotations  from  some  source  textually  different  from 
our  Gospels, — an  inference  confirmed  by  the  further  fact  that 
he  adduces,  from  the  same  memoirs,  matter  which  is  not 
found  in  our  Gospel  narratives ;  e.g.,  "  Wherefore  the  Lord 
Jesus  has  said,  '  In  whatever  ways  I  shall  find  you,  in  the 
same  also  I  wih  judge  you;'"*  and  again:  "  When  Jesus 
came  to  the  river  Jordan,  where  John  was  baptizing,  as  Jesus 
descended  into  the  water,  a  fire  also  was  kindled  in  Jordan  ; 
and,  when  he  came  up  out  of  the  water,  the  apostles  of  this 
our  Christ  have  written  that  the  Holy  Spirit  lighted  upon  him 
as  a  dove."t  Comparing  these  phenomena  with  the  citations 
of  Irenffius,  we  seem  to  be  in  contact,  at  the  earlier  date,  with 
the  unfashioned  materials  of  Christian  tradition,  ere  yet  they 
had  set  into  their  final  form,  with  some  elements  still  present 
which  were  ultimately  to  l>e  discarded,  and  others  not  yet 
incorporated,  which  could  not  have  been  absent,  hud  the 
author  been  acquainted  with  them. 

Does,  then,  the  external  evidence  conduct  us  to  the  person 
of  a  known  eye-witness,  and  enable  us  to  say  who  it  is  that 
vouches  for  this  statement,  and  who  for  that  ^  On  the  con- 
trary, it  carries  us  back  out  of  the  period  of  definite  names 
into  one  of  indefinite  floating  tradition,— tradition  called 
indeed  "  apostolic,"  but  by  the  vagueness  of  that  very  phrase 
betraying  its  impersonal  and  unaccredited  character.     His- 

*  Dial,  cum  Trypli.  c.  17,  19.  +  Ibid.  c.  88,  7,  8. 


l84  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

torical  memorials  wliich  are  to  depend  for  their  authority  on 
the  personahty  of  their  writer  cannot  afford  to  wait  for  a 
centmy  ere  his  name  comes  out  of  the  silence.  The  remain- 
ing records  of  the  ministry  of  Christ  have  an  origin  so 
obscure,  that  it  is  impossible  to  say  who  is  answerable  for  any 
part  of  them. 

If,  in  default  of  outward  testimony,  we  closely  scrutinize 
the  internal  structure  of  the  synoptical  Gospels,  we  are  met 
by  a  series  of  phenomena  which  virtually  reduce  them  to  a 
single  source,  and  show  that  we  are  not  in  contact  with  three 
independent  reporters.  The  same  recitals  are  repeated  in 
either  two,  or  all  of  them,  with  such  resemblance  in  substance, 
in  arrangement,  and  even  in  language,  as  totally  to  exclude 
the  possibility  of  original  and  separate  authorship.  In  the 
fourth  Gospel,  which  is  really  the  production  of  a  single  hand, 
we  fortunately  have  a  measure  of  the  amount  of  common 
matter  which  may  be  expected  to  appear  in  two  or  more 
independent  accounts  of  the  ministry  of  Christ.  Two-thirds 
of  its  matter  is  peculiar  to  it ;  and  the  rest,  though  dealing 
with  incidents  related  elsewhere,  presents  them  under  aspects 
so  new,  that  the  identity  is  often  difficult  to  trace,  or  is  even 
open  to  doubt.  But  if  the  whole  text  of  the  synoptics  is 
broken  up,  as  it  may  naturally  be,  into  one  hundred  and 
seventy-four  sections,  fifty-eight  of  these  will  be  found 
common  to  all  three :  twenty-six,  besides,  to  Matthew  and 
Mark  ;  seventeen  to  Mark  and  Luke  ;  thirty-two  to  Matthew 
and  Luke  ;  leaving  only  forty-one  unshared  elements,  of  which 
thirty-one  are  found  in  Luke  ;  seven  in  Matthew ;  three  in  Mark, 
comprised  within  the  compass  of  twenty-four  verses.  The  agree- 
ments in  the  parallel  narratives  are  not  so  complete  as  to  ex- 
clude diversities  in  the  accessory  circumstances :  they  are 
greatest  in  the  parables  and  other  discourses  of  Christ,  and  in 
the  marking  epochs  of  the  story,  the  calling  of  the  apostles, 
and  the  transfiguration  ;  though,  in  the  most  momentous  of 
all, — the  last  Passion, — the  deviations  are  considerable. 

Is  it  said,  that  the  fourth  Gospel,  being  supplemental, 
purposely  avoids  what  has  been  already  adequately  told ; 
while  the  other  three,  written  on  the  same  subject,  viz.,  the 
Galilean  and  the  final  stages  of  the  life  of  Christ,  necessarily 


Chap.  11.)      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  185 

reproduce  the  same  incidents  ?  Even  if  we  could  admit  this 
untenable  view  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  no  mere  similarity  of 
design  will  explain  the  accordance  of  the  others.  The 
synoptists  deal  with  the  events  of  fifteen  months,  of  which 
more- than  fourteen  are  assigned  to  Galilee;  and  the  whole 
are  supposed  to  have  been  spent  by  them,  or  their  informants, 
in  attendance  upon  the  steps  of  Jesus.  But  we  hardly  realize 
to  ourselves  how  little  of  this  story  is  really  told.  Of  the 
four  hundred  and  fifty  days  comprised  within  it,  there  are 
notices  of  no  more  than  about  thirty-five ;  while  whole 
months  together — now  three,  now  two — are  dropped  in  total 
silence.  The  evangelists,  when  they  speak,  know  how  to 
recite  with  sufficient  fulness.  The  day  in  the  cornfield  (Matt, 
xii.  1-xiii.  52)  occupies  one-tenth  of  Matthew's  history  of 
Christ's  ministry  ;  the  day  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  one- 
eighth  (v.  l.-viii.  17)  ;  a  day  in  the  Temple,  nearly  one-fifth 
(xxi.  18-xxvi.  2).  The  day  of  the  blighted  fig-tree  occupies 
more  than  one-seventh  of  Mark's  Gospel  (xi.  20-xiii.  37). 
And  five  days  claim,  in  Luke  (xx.  1,  to  the  end),  more  than 
one-fourth  of  his  narrative  (excluding  the  legends  of  the  birth 
and  infancy).  It  appears,  therefore,  that  tirelre-fJtiiieentlis 
of  the  ministry  which  they  describe  is  left  without  a  record ; 
and  that  the  three  Gospels  move  within  the  limits  of  the 
remaining  one-thirteenth.  How  could  this  possibly  be,  if 
they  came,  whether  at  first  or  second  hand,  from  personal 
attendants  of  Jesus,  cognizant  of  the  whole  period  alike,  or, 
if  absent  at  all,  not  all  absent  together '?  Even  if  they  were 
independent  selections  from  a  mass  of  contemporary  memorials, 
preserving  fragments  only  of  the  life  of  Christ,  they  could 
not  all  alight  upon  materials  lying  within  such  narrow  range  ; 
for  the  flying  leaves,  scattered  by  the  winds  of  tradition, 
would  be  impartially  dropped  from  the  whole  organism  of  that 
sacred  history,  and,  when  clustered  by  three  disposing  hands, 
could  never  turn  out  to  be  all  from  the  same  branch.  The 
vast  amount  of  blank  spaces  in  which  they  all  have  to 
acquiesce  betrays  a  time  when  the  sources  of  knowledge  were 
irrecoverably  gone  ;  and  their  large  agreement  in  what  remains, 
that  they  were  only  knitting  up  into  tissues,  slightly  varied, 
the  scanty  materials  which  came  almost  alike  to  all. 


i86  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Still  more  evident  is  the  derivative  character  of  our  Gospels 
when  we  study  their  verbal  coincidences  and  differences.  No 
two  witnesses,  however  perfect  their  substantive  agreement, 
will  tell  any  part  of  their  story  in  identical  words  ;  and  did 
their  recitals  contain  even  a  single  sentence,  other  than  a 
quotation,  cast  in  the  same  mould,  we  should  infer  that  their 
statement  had  been  dictated,  or  artificially  got  up.  Even  of 
the  remembered  words  of  another,  unless  brief  and  incisive, 
they  will  give  divergent  reports,  meeting  only  here  and  there 
upon  some  striking  phrase,  but  moving  in  the  intervals  with- 
out contact  in  terms,  though  parallel  in  drift.  Most  of  all  is 
this  diversity  inevitable,  where  the  words  remembered  were 
spoken  in  one  language,  and  the  witnesses  deliver  their 
report  in  another.  That  they  should  hit  upon  concurrent 
translations,  no  one  will  regard  as  possible  ;  yet  in  our  synop- 
tical Gospels,  there  are  from  three  hundred  and  thirty  to  three 
hundred  and  seventy  verses  common  to  all ;  and,  besides 
these,  from  one  hundred  and  seventy  to  one  hundred  and 
eighty  common  to  Matthew  and  Mark  ;  from  two  hundred 
and  thirty  to  two  hundred  and  forty  to  Matthew  and  Luke  ; 
and  fifty  to  Mark  and  Luke.  Comparing  with  this  range  of 
partnership  the  amount  of  individuality  in  each,  we  find  that 
the  first  Gospel  has  three  hundred  and  thirty  verses  of  its 
own  ;  the  second,  sixty-eight ;  the  third,  five  hundred  and 
forty-one.*  Some  of  the  coincidences  occur  in  common  cita- 
tions from  the  Old  Testament,  where  all  the  narrators  deviate 
from  the  Greek  of  the  Septuagint,  without  betraying,  by 
closeness  of  rendering,  any  controlling  influence  from  the 
Hebrew. 

While  these  facts  certainly  reduce  our  evangelists  to  mere 
editors  of  i^revious  materials,  room  is  still  left  for  a  consider- 
able play  of  variety,  either  in  their  selection  or  in  their  treat- 
ment of  these  materials.  Even  in  the  midst  of  prevailing 
agreement,  both  substantive  and  verbal,  striking  discrepancies 
emerge  in  the  telling  of  the  same  story.     The  first  Gospel 


» 


See  Reuss :  Geschichte  der  heiligen  Schriften  neuen  Test.  §  179.  In 
the  different  Gospels  the  same  words  are  often  differently  divided  into  verses. 
In  Mark  especially  the  verses  are  shorter.  Hence  the  margin  of  variation  in 
counting  the  agreements  by  verses. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND   THE  SCRIPTURES.  187 

supplies  a  series  of  such  cases  by  its  curious  tendency,  as  by 
some  defect  of  binocular  vision,  to  see  its  objects  cwice  over ; 
as  in  the  cure  of  two  Gadarene  demoniacs,*  the  restoration  of 
sight  to  two  blind  men  near  Jericho,!  the  combination  of  the 
ass  with  the  colt  at  the  entry  into  Jerusalem, {  the  reviling  of 
Jesus  on  the  cross  by  hotli  robbers,  instead  of  by  one.§  The 
Jericho  miracle  was  wrought,  according  to  one  account,  |1  on 
going  into  the  town ;  according  to  the  others,  on  going  out  of 
it.  When  the  twelve  are  sent  upon  their  Galilean  mission, 
they  are  ordered,  in  two  reports,  to  take  no  staff ;  in  the  third, 
to  take  nothing  but  a  staff, — a  difference  trilling  in  itself,  but 
noticeable  in  its  relation  to  the  early  handling  of  Christian 
tradition.  At  times  we  can  scarcely  fail  to  see  that  the  same 
story,  in  different  versions,  has  been  inserted  twice,  as  if  it 
related  successive  incidents  ;  as,  in  the  case  of  the  miraculous 
feeding  of  the  multitude,  counted  now  as  five  thousand,  and 
now  as  four  thousand,^  of  the  Pharisees'  demand  of  a  sign,** 
and  of  their  reproach  of  exorcism  by  Beelzebub. ft 

Through  how  many  recensions  the  Christian  tradition  passed 
before  it  set  into  the  form  under  which  our  Gospels  present  it, 
it  is  beyond  the  resources  of  criticism  to  decide.  But  the 
traces  of  successive  additions  as  well  as  of  composite  structure 
are  sufficiently  distinct,  not  merely  in  the  finer  phenomena  of 
language,  but  in  the  broad  veins  of  thought  and  sentiment. 
Mingled  with  the  genuine  teachings  of  Jesus,  and  often 
obtruding  a  rude  interruption  upon  their  purity  and  depth, 
appear  sentences  manifestly  thrown  up  by  the  controversies 
and  pretensions  of  the  apostolic  and  even  the  post-apostolic 
age.  The  whole  theory  of  his  person, — that  he  was  Messiah, 
what  was  the  meaning  of  his  death,  what  the  range  of  his 
kingdom,  and  when  would  be  the  time  of  his  return  to  take  it 
up, — was  a  posthumous  and  retrospective  product,  worked  out 
by  disciples  who  could  not  bid  adieu  to  so  divine  an  infiuence, 

*  IMatt.  viii.  28.     Comp,  Mark  v.  2. 
t  ]\Iatt.  XX.  30.     Comp.  Luke  x\'iii.  35. 
t  Matt.  xxi.  2,  7.     Comp.  Mark  xi.  2,  4,  Luke  xix.  30,  33. 
§  IMatt.  xxvii.  44.     Comp.  Luke  xxiii.  3Q ;  here,  however,  Mark  agrees  with 
JIatthcw. 

II  Luke  xviii.  35.  1  IMatt.  xiv.  15,  xv.  32. 

*•  Matt.  xii.  88,  xvi.  1.  .  ft  Matt.  xi.  34,  xii.  24, 


i88  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  1 1. 

and  who,  in  delivering  it  over  to  the  world,  made  their  own 
conceptions  its  vehicle,  and  fused  into  one  his  supposed  future 
and  his  real  past.  Eager  to  attribute  to  him  beforehand  all 
that  they  thought  about  him  afterwards,  they  will  have  it  that 
he  claimed  the  Messiahship,  yet  would  not  let  it  be  mentioned  ; 
that  he  contemplated  and  fore-announced  his  death  and  resur- 
rection, yet  without  succeeding  in  preparing  them  for  the 
event ;  that  he  authorized  their  look-out  for  his  return  from 
heaven,  yet  without  ever  naming  himself  as  coming  hack,  but 
only  a  third  person,  the  mythologic  "  Son  of  man,"  as 
"  coming,"  to  wind  up  the  drama  of  human  things ;  that  he 
sided  with  the  Jewish  Christians,  and  wished  only  Israelites 
to  belong  to  him  ;  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  foresaw  how  the 
Jewish  appeal  would  comparatively  fail,  and  the  gospel  must 
be  preached  to  all  nations ;  that  he  provided  for  the  long  con- 
flict between  the  Petrine  and  the  Pauline  gospel,  and  gave  the 
headship  and  the  keys  to  Peter ;  that  he  entered  into  the  far 
distant  question  whether  converts  should  be  baptized  as  at  first, 
into  his  name,  or,  as  in  the  second  century,  into  the  name  of 
"  the  Father,  and  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Spirit,"  and  gave  his 
voice  for  the  Trinitarian  formula.  In  all  these  cases,  and  they 
are  but  samples,  the  anachronism  must  be  felt  by  every  one 
who  has  closely  studied  the  infancy  of  the  Christian  Church  ; 
and  of  the  two  or  three  strata  of  unhistorical  material  which 
overlie  the  primitive  and  un vitiated  tradition,  the  newest  can 
scarcely  have  been  deposited  before  the  third  or  fourth  decade 
of  the  second  century. 

Out  of  writings  thus  constituted,  how  is  it  possible  to  make 
an  authoritative  "  rule  of  faith  and  practice  "  ?  Composed  of 
mixed  materials,  aggregating  themselves  through  three  or  four 
generations,  they  report  no  authorship  in  any  case  ;  and  no 
date,  except  of  their  unhistorical  accretions.  Imbedded  even 
in  these,  there  is  doubtless  many  a  gem  of  original  truth 
preserved  ;  and  in  the  residuary  portions  which  are  the 
nucleus  of  these,  we  approach,  no  doubt,  the  central  charac- 
teristics of  the  teaching  and  the  life  of  Christ.  But  the 
evidence  of  this  is  wholly-  internal,  and  has  nothing  to 
authenticate  it  except  our  sense  of  the  inimitable  beauty,  the 
inexliaustible   depth,    the   penetrating    truth,    of   the    living 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  189 

words  they  preserve  and  the  Hving  form  they  present.  Of  our 
witnesses  we  know  nothmg,  except  that,  in  such  cases,  what 
they  tell  as  reality,  it  was  plainly  beyond  them  to  construct 
as  fiction. 

If  our  points  of  contact  are  thus  few,  and  are  ratlier  felt 
than  seen,  with  the  ministry  of  Christ,  what  can  we  say  of  the 
I/it-tJi  and  infancy,  which  lie  still  thirty  3'ears  behind  '?  Even 
were  it  true  that  apostles  were  our  reporters,  it  would  be 
strange  that  precisely  the  evangelist  who,  as  the  "  beloved 
disciple,"  was  nearest  to  Jesus  while  on  earth,  and  gave  a 
home  to  Mary  ever  after,  should  be  silent  of  what  she  alone 
could  tell,  and  should  thus  drop  the  only  link  that  could  save 
our  connection  with  that  remoter  time.  But  left  as  we  are, 
in  the  absence  of  all  apostolic  guarantee,  to  the  mere  verisimili- 
tude of  unaccredited  tradition,  we  have  no  outward  support 
against  the  false  chronology,  the  irreconcilable  contradictions, 
the  historical  prodigies,  and  the  fabulous  mode  of  conception, 
presented  by  the  two  stories  of  the  Nativity.  They  do  not 
belong  to  the  kind  of  record  that  can  commend  itself  by 
self-evidence  ;  and  other  evidence  they  have  none.  Yet  every 
Christmas  celebration  attests  how  large  and  fundamental  a 
place  in  the  faith  of  Christendom  is  held  by  the  incidents  of 
that  poetical  mythology. 

§  2.   The  Fourth  Gosiiel. 

There  remains,  however,  yet  another  Gospel,  which,  if  the 
tradition  of  its  origin  be  true,  takes  us  out  of  all  obscuring 
mists,  and  brings  us  into  clear  historical  light.  Whether  or 
not  it  rightly  bears  the  name  of  the  apostle  John,  it  is,  at  all 
events,  free  from  the  doul)ts  and  complications  arising  from 
the  process  of  growth  out  of  prior  materials  of  different  dates  : 
it  needs  no  analysis  into  component  elements  ;  it  is  plainly  a 
whole,  the  production  of  a  single  mind, — a  mind  imbued  with 
a  conception  of  its  subject  consistent  and  complete,  and  not 
less  distinct  for  l)eing  mystical  and  of  rare  spiritual  depth. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  the  strife  of  opinion  in  regard  to  the 
origin  of  Christianity  concentrates  itself  upon  this  point  ;  for 
while  the  problem  is  simple  in  its  form, — was  the  hand  which 


I90  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  ll. 

^vi-ote  this  book  that  of  John  ?— an  affirmative  answer  to  it 
wins  everything  at  once,  an  original  portraiture  of  the  person 
of  Jesus,  an  authentic  account  of  the  duration  and  plan  of  his 
public  mission,  and  a  measure  of  his  divine  claims.  So  long 
as  the  synoptical  Gospels  retained  their  position  as  original 
and  independent  witnesses,  doubts  respecting  the  fourth 
Gospel  touched  only  that  higher  estimate  of  Christ's  nature  to 
which  it  gave  the  chief  sanction  ;  and,  even  if  they  prevailed, 
there  was  still  the  triple  history  of  his  life  in  its  more  human 
aspect  to  fall  back  upon  for  solid  though  less  sublime  assur- 
ance. With  better  understanding  of  the  work  of  the  earlier 
evangelists,  the  Johannine  question  has  become  more  vital, 
and  is  discussed  with  a  passionate  eagerness,  which,  however 
natural,  and  even  pathetic  as  the  mark  of  religious  anxiety,  is 
apt  to  discolour  the  evidence,  and  distort  its  proportions  before 
the  eye.  Wliile  confessing  the  strongest  drawing  of  sympathy 
towards  the  characteristics  of  this  Gospel,  I  will  endeavour  to 
give  an  impartial  summary  of  the  facts. 

A.  External  Testimony. 

In  one  of  the  most  masterly  defences  of  the  authenticity  of 
the  fourth  Gospel,  it  is  said,  "  No  one  who  knows  the  state 
of  the  external  testimony  to  the  authorship  of  the  Apocalypse 
and  Gospel  will  hold  that  it  adds  much,  in  any  way,  to  the 
decision  of  the  question.  Neither  of  them  receives  any  explicit 
testimony  till  the  time  of  Justin  Martyr,  about  the  middle  of 
the  second  century ;  when  the  two  Johns,  having  been  both 
disciples  of  Christ,  probably  enough  were  already  confused. 
Within  ten  years  both  are  explicitly  acknowledged."* 

This  disparaging  comment  on  the  external  testimony  seems 
to  imply  that,  even  if  it  were  better  than  it  is,  it  would  only 
come  in  by  way  of  confirmation  to  a  decision  resting  on  other 
grounds  ;  but  that,  as  it  is,  the  confirmation  goes  for  little. 
Prior,  however,  to  the  external  evidence,  or  in  its  absence, 
what  case  could  there  possibly  be, — I  do  not  say  admitting 
of  "decision,"  but  presented  for  "decision"  at  all?  Let 
there  be  no  history  of  a  book,   let  it  come  into  our  hands 

*  National  Eeview,  July,  1857,  p.  112. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  191 

without  a  record  of  its  source,  and  by  what  scrutiny  of  its 
hterary  characteristics,  by  what  marks  of  individuahty,  shall 
we  refer  it  home  to  some  one  among  the  myriad  shadowy 
hands  that  crowd  the  darkness  of  the  past  ?  No  such  divina- 
tion is  possible ;  and  wherever  a  critic  pretends,  by  the  mere 
keenness  of  his  unaided  eye,  to  have  detected  the  writer  in 
some  unheard-of  quarter, — like  the  Ziirich  scholar  who  made 
out  that  this  very  Gospel  was  certainly  the  production  of 
Apollos,* — we  justly  look  on  the  pretension  as  audacious,  and 
its  proofs  as  a  waste  of  ingenuity.  We  are  absolutely  depen- 
dent, for  the  first  suggestion  of  an  author's  name,  on  the 
witnesses  who  speak  of  it ;  and  any  disabilities  attaching  to 
these  witnesses  must  seriously  affect  our  reliance  on  their 
report,  and  throw  a  greater  burden  on  the  internal  confirma- 
tory proofs.  The  primary  and  substantive  evidence  is 
testimonial ;  which,  once  given,  may  gain  weight  by  various 
congruities,  or  lose  it  by  incongruities  in  the  writing  itself; 
but  which,  if  not  given,  can  be  replaced  by  neither. 

The  fourth  Gospel  does  not  materially  differ  from  the  others 
in  the  date  of  its  earliest  citation  with  the  reputed  author's 
name.  Theophilus,  a  convert  from  heathenism,  elected  in  176, 
A.D.,  to  the  see  of  Antioch,  addressed  to  his  Pagan  friend, 
Autolycus,  a  defence  of  Christianity,  in  three  books,  which  is 
still  extant,  and  which  approximately  reveals  its  date  by  a  list 
of  the  Roman  emperors  carried  to  the  death  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  a.d.  180.  In  the  second  book  we  meet  with  a 
passage  beginning  thus  :  "  Wherefore  the  sacred  Scriptures 
teach  us,  and  all  that  have  the  Spirit  (7n'eu|uaTO9o()o0  ;  of 
whom  John  says,  '  In  the  beginning  was  the  word,  and  the 
word  was  with  God  ; '  showing  that  at  first  God  was  alone, 
and  in  him  was  the  word,  "f  Here,  near  the  end  of  the  third 
generation  from  his  death,  we  are  introduced  for  the  first  time 
to  the  writer  of  the  fourth  Gospel ;  still  without  any  distinc- 
tive epithet  identifying  him  as  one  of  the  Twelve ;  for  in 
classing  him  with  prophets  and  partakers  of  the  Spirit,  he 
does  but  place  him  in  the  same  line  with  the  Sibylline 
versifier,    from   whom    he    gives   copious   extracts   similarly 

*  Die  Evangelienfrage.     Denksclinft.     Zuricia.     1858. 
t  Ad  Autolycum,  ii.  22. 


192  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  il. 

recommended.*  For  the  complete  designation  of  the  author, 
we  have  to  wait  for  Irenaeus,  who  sajs,  "  Next,  John,  the 
disciple  of  the  Lord,  who  also  lay  on  his  breast,  himself  put 
forth  the  Gospel,  while  staying  at  Ephesus  in  Asia;"t  and 
his  frequent  quotations  abundantly  prove  that  the  book  which 
bore  his  name  was  no  other  than  our  fourth  Gospel.  The 
lateness  of  this  testimony  is  thought  to  be  compensated  by  the 
peculiar  opportunities  with  which  the  witness  was  favoured  ; 
for  in  childhood  he  had  seen  the  aged  Polycarp  of  Smyrna, 
the  disciple  of  John  ;  and  he  still  retained  the  memory  of  the 
old  man's  look  and  gait  and  speech.  And  though  Iren^eus' 
place  was  in  the  Western  Church,  he  never  lost  his  interest 
in  the  affairs  of  the  Asiatic  Christians,  and  freely  appeals  in 
controversy  to  the  local  traditions  handed  down  through  the 
successors  of  Polycarp  to  his  own  time.  So  great  was  the 
advantage  which  he  thus  enjoyed,  that  we  should  expect  him, 
\\\  any  encounter  with  persons  who  did  not  acknowledge  the 
fourth  Gospel,  to  confute  their  doubts  by  direct  information 
drawn  from  Polycarp  and  the  Johannine  churches.  Yet  what 
is  the  fact  ?  He  actually  docs  engage  in  controversy  with  just 
such  persons,— with  "  Some  who  of  late  do  not  admit  the  form 
of  tradition  which  is  according  to  the  Gospel  of  John.":[  But 
instead  of  establishing  the  authority  of  that  Gospel  by  simply 
stating  what  he  knew  about  its  apostolic  origin,  on  the  testi- 
mony of  personal  disciples  of  John,  he  resorts  to  the  absurd 
arguments  already  noticed,  that  there  must  be  four  Gospels 
because  there  are  four  winds.  Not  only  does  he  thus  dis- 
appoint us  of  his  early  memories,  when  we  should  be  glad  to 
have  them  :  but,  when  at  last  we  get  them,  they  do  not  prove 
particularly  trustworthy  ;  for  he  assures  us,  on  the  authority 
"  of  the  Gospel,"  and  of  all  the  old  men  who  in  Asia  had 
known  John,  the  Lord's  disciple,  and  of  those  who  had  known 
other  apostles  besides,  that  Jesus  lived  to  be  more  than  fifty 
years  of  age  !  § 

In  estimating  the  value  of  IrenEeus'  evidence,  it  is  necessary 
to  distinguish  between  what  he  believed  and  what  he  knew. 
He  doubtless  believed  that  the  Apostle  John,  after  banishment 

*  Ad  Autolycum,  ii.  9,  36,  iii.  p.  129.  t  Adv.  Hser.  iii.  1. 

X  Ibid.  iii.  11.  §  Ibid.  ii.  39. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AM)    THE  SCRIPTURES.  193 

to  Patmos  ill  the  persecution  uiicler  Domitian,  lived  at  Ephesus 
till  the  time  of  Trajan  (a.d.  98-117),  and  there  wrote  the  fourth 
Gospel.  He  knew  by  memories  treasured  through  some  forty 
years  what  Polycarp  had  in  his  youth  heard  tell  about  the 
life  of  .Jesus  from  surviving  eye-witnesses  of  it,  including 
John.  Had  Irenaeus  reported  the  contents  of  Polycarp's 
recitals,  he  might  have  saved  for  us  some  missing  element  of 
tradition  respecting  the  ministry  of  Christ ;  and  we  should 
have  known  as  fact,  that  it  was  current  at  the  close  of  the 
apostolic  age.  But  his  silence  leaves  us  none  the  wiser  for 
his  contact  with  the  martyr  :  from  whom  we  have  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  he  learned  anything  about  the  composition  of  the 
lourLh  Gospel  or  the  other  Johannine  writings.  For  his 
l^eliefs  on  such  matters  he  was,  so  far  as  we  know,  not  less 
dependent  than  others  on  the  common  Christian  tradition  of 
his  time,  and  was  in  no  position  of  authority,  enabling  him  to 
confirm  or  to  correct  it.  The  current  assumptions  cannot 
claim  exemption  from  criticism,  in  virtue  of  his  assent  to 
them. 

Yet,  surely  the  bare  fact  of  the  young  Polycarp's  resort  to 
"  the  Lord's  disciple  John,"  settles  one  important  point, — viz., 
the  actual  residence  of  the  apostle  in  Asia  Minor  ;  and  so  far 
favours  the  ascription  to  him  of  a  Gospel  having  its  probable 
origin  there.  So  we  should  say,  if  Polycarp  had  gone  alone 
in  his  visits  to  the  aged  "  disciple."'  But  we  hear  of  them  also 
from  one  who  went  with  him,  and  who,  in  doing  so,  introduces 
us,  as  Eusebius  remarks,  to  a  different  John,  viz.  "  ilte 
Preshi/tci-/^  This  fellow-learner  (and  afterwards  forerunner  in 
martyrdom)  is  Papias,  "  the  ancient  man,  companion  of 
Polycarp,"  who  also  collected  the  reported  sayings  of  Christ, 
and  had  recourse,  in  verifying  his  materials,  to  two  of  "  the 
Lord's  disciples,"  Jolui  the  Presbyter  and  Aristion.  Since,  in 
their  joint  search  for  the  same  thing,  Papias  depended  on  the 
"  Presbyter,"  and  Polycarp  on  the  "  Apostle,"  it  is  natural  to 
ask  whether  both  do  not  rest  on  the  same  personal  authority, 
under  different  designations  ;  and  whether,  in  that  case,  as 
Papias  speaks  for  himself,  Polycarp  only  through  the  memoiy 
of  another,  the  real  historical  person  is  not  the  Presbyter  John. 
mistaken  by  Irena.nis  for  the  Apostle.     The  conjecture  receives 

o 


194  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Bcok  il. 

some  negative  confirmation  from  the  extant  epistle  of  Polycarp 
to  the  PhiHppians ;  in  which  no  mention  is  made  of  the 
Apostle  John,  though  the  writer  assails  the  same  heretics 
with  whom,  according  to  tradition,  the  apostle  had  contended 
at  Ephesus,  and  against  whom  the  Johannine  letters  are 
directed.  On  the  other  side  may  be  set  the  positive  mention 
by  Papias  of  hoth  Johns  at  Ephesus,  though  his  personal 
relation  was  with  the  Presbyter.  He  has  no  weight,  however,  as 
an  historical  authority  for  matters  beyond  his  own  experience  ; 
and  would  be  as  liable  as  any  of  his  neighbours  to  take  up 
with  the  current  Christian  belief,  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
second  century,  that  the  closing  years  of  the  Apostle  John's 
life  had  been  spent  at  Ephesus. 

Unless,  therefore,  we  know  the  basis  of  that  belief,  its 
recognition  by  Papias  tells  us  nothing.  There  need  be  no 
mystery  about  its  origin.  It  came  from  the  assumption, 
l^opularly  made  then,  as  it  is  now,  that  the  Book  of 
Ptevelation  is  from  the  pen  of  the  Ajiostle  John.  The  Seer 
and  writer  makes  no  such  profession  :  he  calls  himself  only 
"servant''  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  "brother  and  fellow"  of  his 
readers  (i.  9) ;  his  angelic  guide  calls  him  one  of  the 
fraternity  of  "prophets"  (xxii.  6),  who,  in  the  early  Church 
are  always  secondary  to  the  Apostles  (1  Cor.  xii.  28)  :  and 
■when,  in  the  crystal  light  of  the  New  Jerusalem  coming  down 
from  heaven,  he  sees  the  names  of  the  twelve  Apostles  in- 
scribed on  her  twelve  foundation  stones  (xxi.  14),  no  one  can 
suppose  that  he  reads  there  his  own.  These  indications 
were  easily  overlooked  in  an  uncritical  age.  And  when  once 
the  John  of  the  Apocalypse  had  been  identified  with  the 
Apostle,  the  tradition  found  in  the  book  itself  all  that  was 
needed  for  its  completion.  The  author  was  in  "tribulation," 
doubtless  as  an  exile,  in  Patmos  "for  the  Word  of  God  and 
the  testimony  of  Jesus"  (i.  9).  This  could  only  be  in 
Domitian's  persecution,  a.d.  95,  to  which  indeed  allusions 
are  to  be  found  in  xvii.  6,  11,  14.  The  messages  with  which 
the  Seer  is  charged  to  the  seven  churches  (ii.  iii.)  imply  his 
relation  to  them  collectively  as  habitual  apostolic  agent.  And 
that  the  first  letter  is  addressed  to  Ephesus  indicates  that  city 
as  his  place  of  residence.     If,  as  is  probable,  it  was  from  that 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  195 

centre  that  both  the  Apocalypse  and  the  fourth  Gospel,  though 
at  different  times  and  from  different  hands,  passed  into  cir- 
culation, this  local  coincidence  would  extend  the  Apostle's 
name  from  the  one  to  the  other,  and  complete  the  tradition 
that,  after  his  release  from  banishment,  he  lived  and  still 
wrote  at  Ephesus  into  or  bej'ond  the  first  decade  of  the  second 
century. 

The  story  then  which,  towards  the  end  of  that  century, 
emerges  in  the  writings  of  Iren?eus,  of  the  Apostle  John';, 
removal  to  lesser  Asia  and  residence  at  Ephesus,  has  no 
support  from  external  testimony,  but  is  itself  built  up  by  false 
inferences  from  the  very  books  which  it  is  supposed  to 
authenticate.  Not  only  does  its  late  date  indicate  this,  but 
the  silly  fables  mixed  up  with  it  when  it  does  appear ;  e.g. 
the  caldron  of  boiling  oil  which  only  served  to  the  apostle  for 
a  harmless  bath,  and  his  orthodox  flight  from  the  water  in 
which  he  saw  the  heretic  Cerinthus  bathing,  lest  the  roof 
should  fall.  When,  from  such  fictions  of  later  tradition,  we  turn 
to  the  Christian  literature  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  second 
century,  in  which,  as  mainly  the  produce  of  Asia  Minor,  we 
may  fairly  look  for  witnesses  to  the  Apostle  if  he  were  there, — 
to  Luke's  two  histories,  the  epistles  to  the  Ephesians  and 
Colossians,  the  1  Timothy,  the  Ignatian  letter  to  the  Ephesians, 
we  find  an  absence  of  Johannine  characteristics,  and  a  silence 
in  regard  to  the  Ephesian  tradition,  more  significant  than  the 
credulous  statements  of  Irenteus. 

When  we  enter  upon  the  series  of  anonymous  citations,  the 
limits  within  which  we  can  appeal  to  them  in  evidence  of  the 
existence  of  the  book  are  by  no  means  easy  to  determine. 
Two  principal  causes  of  doubt  hold  the  proljlem  in  suspense  : 
we  cannot  with  any  certainty  date  tlie  quotations ;  and  we 
cannot  be  sure  that  they  are  quotations  at  all,  and  not 
rather, — inversely, — an  earlier  expression  of  some  thought 
pervading  the  theology  of  the  age  or  school,  and  ultimately 
fixed  in  the  language  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  The  first  of  these 
causes  conies  into  play  when  we  alight  upon  the  book  in  the 
Gnostic  circles  of  the  second  century  ;  the  other,  when  we  pass 
farther  back  to  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas. 

Am  ng  the  heresiarchs  who  threatened  to  absorb  Christianity 

o  2 


196  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

by  planting  its  founder  and  its  God  among  their  seons,  there 
was  no  greater  figure  than  that  of  Yalentinus  :  whose  influence 
is  attested  by  the  eagerness  of  ecclesiastical  opposition, 
especially  as  represented  by  Irensus  and  Hippolytus.  As  he 
is  known  to  have  gone  to  Rome  about  a.d.  140,  and  not  to 
have  lived  beyond  about  a.d.  160,  his  use  of  the  fourth  Gospel, 
if  it  could  1)6  proved,  would  add  nearly  fort}'  years  to  its 
ascertained  term  of  existence.  That  it  was  used  by  his 
disciples  in  the  next  generation  is  indisputable  ;  for  one  of 
them,  Ptolemseus,  addressed  a  letter  to  the  Lady  Flora, — a 
member  of  the  school, — which  has  been  preserved  by  Epi- 
phanius ;  wherein  he  says,  "Besides,  the  Saviour  claims 
the  creation  of  the  cosmos  as  his  own,  inasmuch  as  all 
things  were  made  by  him,  and  without  him  was  nothing 
made."  And  another — Herakleon — wrote  comments  on  the 
Gospel,  some  passages  of  which  have  been  handed  down  by 
Origen.  Yet,  while  they  used  the  book,  it  is  surprising  how 
little  its  historical  authority  seems  to  have  weighed  with  them  ; 
for,  in  the  face  of  its  obvious  chronology  and  plainest  narrative, 
they  attributed  to  the  ministry  of  Jesus  a  duration  of  only  a  year, 
and  taught  that  he  lived  on  earth  eighteen  months  after  his 
resurrection.*  That  Yalentinus  himself  had  in  his  hand  the 
Gospel  which  became  such  a  favourite  with  his  followers  there 
was  no  ground  for  supposing,  till  the  discovery  of  the  long  lost 
Philosophumena  attributed  to  Hippolytus  :  for  in  the  account 
of  his  system  by  Irenaeus,+  and  of  the  passages  of  scripture 
adduced  in  its  support,  we  find  only  texts  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, from  the  synoptics,  from  Paul,  tortured  into  applications 
which  they  will  not  bear  ;  while  not  a  single  Johannine  text 
presents  itself,  though  to  every  reader  the  most  apposite 
(quotations  must  occur,  lying  right  in  the  way,  as  at  once 
supplying  a  good  argument  and  sparing  a  bad  one.  Thus,  in 
support  of  the  position  that  before  Christ  no  man  had  known 
the  supreme  God,  the  irresistible  appeal  is  not  made  to  John 
i.  18,  "  No  man  has  seen  God  at  any  time  ;  the  only-begotten 
Son,  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  he  has  revealed 
him."  This  silence  becomes  the  more  striking,  when  we  turn 
to  an  appendix  in  which  Irenseus  reports  the  later  Yalentinian 

*  Epiphanius :  Hser.  xxxiii.  3.  t  Adv.  Hier.  i.  8,  1-4. 


Chap.  II.]       PROTESTAXTS  AXD    THE   SCRfPTURES.  197 

expositions  given  by  PtolemaBus  ;  for  here,  at  last,  we  meet 
with  the  Johannine  texts  which  we  so  strangely  miss  in  a 
system  which  moves  among  ?eons  named  "Logos,"  "Only- 
begotten,"  "Life,"  "Grace,"  and  "Truth."  The  natm-al 
inference  would  be  that  the  master  had  not  yet  seen  the  book 
in  which  the  disciple  found  a  welcome  ally. 

But  Hippolytus,  we  are  assured,  with  the  treatise  of  Valen- 
tinus  lying  open  before  him,  actually  produces  from  it  pas- 
sages out  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  and  so  corrects  this  negative 
inference.     His  account  of  the  Valentinian  Gnosis  is  intro- 
duced  by   these    words  :    "  Valentinus    and    Heracleon   and 
Ptolemseus,  and  all  their  school,  disciples  of  Pythagoras  and 
Plato,  following  the  principle  recited,  established  their  own 
numerical  scheme  ;  " — "  The  above-mentioned  monad  is  called 
by  them,  Father;" — "The  Father,  says  he,  was  alone  unbe- 
gotten."*     "Who  is  the  ''he''  that  says  this?     How  are  we  to 
identify  him  within  the  previous  plural  "  tJiem,''  whence  he 
emerges?     We  can  only  reply,  he  is  tJiat  one  of  them  whose 
book   was   before    Hippolytus    as    he    wrote ;    but    icJtieJi    of 
them   fulfils  this  condition  we  cannot  tell.     When  therefore, 
farther  on,  the  writer  similarly  states,  "  Hence,  says  he,  the 
Saviour's  words,  '  All  they  that  came  l^efore  me  are  thieves 
and  robbers,'  ','   (John  x.  10,) t  it  is  quite  arbitrary  to  fasten 
this  quotation  from  the  fourth    Gospel    upon  Valentinus  in 
particular,  as  distinguished  from  Heracleon  and  Ptolenifeus. 
Come   the   citation   from   whichsoever  of   them  it  may,  the 
words  of  Hippolytus  would  stand  exactly  as  they  are.     There 
is  nothing,  therefore,  here  to  disturb  the  indications  given  by 
L'enseus,  that  the  fourth  Gospel  first  came  into  the  hands  of 
the   Yalentinians   in    the    second   generation   of   their    sect. 
Exact  dates  cannot  be  confidently  given  ;  but  the  most  recent 
and  probal)le  conclusion  assigns  Ptolemaeus  to  al)0ut  a. p.  ISO, 
and  Herakleon  to  a  time  ten  years  later.  :^ 

*  Hippol.  Philosophumcna,  vi.  26.  +  Ibid.  vi.  35. 

t  The  case  of  Basileides  and  his  alleged  citations  labours  under  precisely 
the  same  defect  of  proof  as  that  of  Valentinus,  and  requires  no  separate 
notice.  He  also  is  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with  his  later  followers ; 
from  any  one  of  whom  the  quotations  adduced  may  hayc  i^roceeded ;  the 
plural  subject  being  followed  by  the  verb  in  the  singular,  — "  Basileidos  and 
Isidorus,  and  the  whole  x^opos  of  these  men  falsely  allege   (^KaTn\{/(v?jeTU'-)  " 


198  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  11. 

Equally  unsuccessful  is  the  appeal  to  Marcion  as  a  witness 
to  the  existence  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  That  he  made  no  use 
of  it,  but  in  constructing  his  system  resorted  only  to  Luke 
and  ten  of  Paul's  Epistles,  is  admitted  on  all  hands.  This 
selection,  however,  was  due,  we  are  told,  not  to  unacquaintance 
with  the  Johannine  writings,  but  to  deliberate  rejection  of 
them,  as  unsuitable  to  his  purpose ;  and  there  is  certainly 
some  passionate  language  of  Tertullian  which  gives  a  colour- 
able aspect  to  this  assertion.  Marcion  was  induced,  says  this 
vehement  controversialist,  by  the  second  chapter  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  "  to  destroy  the  standing  of  those 
Gospels  which  are  published  under  the  names  of  apostles  and 
apostolic  men,  and,  by  taking  away  reliance  on  them,  transfer 
it  to  his  own."*  And  again  he  says,  "  Had  you  (Marcion)  not 
purposely  rejected  some  of  the  scriptures  that  oppose  your 
opinions,  and  corrupted  others,  the  Gospel  of  John  would 
have  confuted  you."t  Here,  no  doubt,  the  exclusive  use  by 
Marcion  of  a  few  writings  arbitrarily  detached  from  their 
usual  companions  is  treated  as  a  repudiation  of  the  rest ;  and 
since,  at  the  time  when  Tertullian  wrote,  the  canon  was  made 
up,  and  all  its  parts  would  be  alike  to  him,  it  is  not  wonderful 
that  the  fourth  Gospel,  being  absent  from  the  Heresiarch's 
list,  is  classed  among  his  rejected  books.  To  infer  from  this 
loose  language  that  Tertullian  knew  Marcion  to  have  been 
in  possession  of  the  Johannine  Gospel  would  be  unwarrant- 
able. He  probably  knew  nothing  about  it ;  but,  presuming 
that  what  was  scripture  now  had  been  scripture  then,  resented, 
with  all  the  heat  of  his  African  rhetoric,  the  dishonour  in- 
iiicted  on  the  Church  by  so  fastidious  an  anthology  of  the 
Bible.  It  is  the  less  likely  that  Marcion's  disregard  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  was  intentional,  because  from  Hippolytus  we 
learn  that  his  follower  Apelles  already  used  \i,%  and  from 
Origen  that  passages  of  it  were  cited  by  later  Marcionites. 
And  who  can  believe,  that,  with  his  anti-Judaic  design  to 
construe  Christianity  into  a  universal  religion,  Marcion  would 

&c.,  vii.  20.     As  the  sect  still  existed  in  the  third  century,  such  passages 
supply  no  determinate  chronology. 

»  Adv.  Marc.  iv.  4.  t  De  Carne  Christi.  c.  3. 

^  Hippol.  Philos.  vii.  38. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  199 

have  taken  Luke  as  his  text-book,  if  the  next  Gospel  had  been 
readj'  to  his  hand  ?  It  ^YOuld  have  saved  him  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  trouble  and  odium  he  incurred  in  making  a 
synoptic  speak  sufficiently  like  Paul,  and  supplied  him  with 
many  a  formula  weightier  than  his  own  for  the  expression  of 
some  favourite  ideas.  In  the  case,  therefore,  of  both  these 
sects,  the  evidence  points  to  the  same  conclusion, — that  the 
Gospel  was  known  to  their  second  generation,  but  unknown 
to  their  first.  If  so,  it  passed  into  circulation  between  a.d. 
140  and  a.d.  170.* 

This  inference  is  supported  by  another  witness,  producible 
from  the  same  age.  A  controversy  began  at  Laodicea  in  the 
year  170,  on  the  question  whether  Christians  ought  to  keep,  or 
not  to  keep,  the  paschal  feast  according  to  the  Jewish  rule  ;  one 
party  maintaining  that,  as  Jesus  kept  it  with  the  twelve  before 
he  suffered,  so  should  his  followers,  and  appealing  to  Matthew's 
Gospel  in  support  of  their  opinion  ;  the  other  insisting  that 
Jesus  in  his  death  was  himself  the  true  passover,  and  closed 
forever  the  typical  celebration  ;  resting  their  case  on  the  fourth 
Gospel.  This  latter  doctrine  found  a  zealous  advocate  in 
Claudius  Apollinaris,  bishop  of  Hierapohs  in  Phrygia ;  and  in 
a  fragment  of  his,  preserved  in  the  Paschal  Chronicle,  occurs 
the  following  distinct  reference  to  the  narrative  in  John  xix.  34  : 
"  He  who  was  pierced  in  his  holy  side,  who  poured  out  of  his 
side  the  two  purifiers,  water  and  blood,  word  and  spirit,  and 
who  was  buried  on  the  paschal  day,  having  been  put  into  a 
sepulchre  of  stone."  It  is  singular  that,  though  this  is  cited 
as  a  set-off  against  the  authority  of  Matthew,  on  which  tlie 
opponents  rely,  it  is  not  put  forth  under  the  name  of  John,  so 
as  to  make  apostle  answer  apostle.  In  the  anonymous  charac- 
ter of  its  citation,  as  well  as  in  its  date  (between  a.d.  170 
and  A.D.  180),  it  agrees  with  the  Yalentinian  and  Marcionite 
evidence. 

Till  within  a  few  years,  the  citations  which  we  have  passed 
under  review  afforded  the  only  clear   vestiges  of  the  fourth 

*  This  chronological  conclusion  from  the  history  of  the  Valcntiuian  Gnos- 
ticism coincides  exactly  with  that  which  Pfleiderer  deduces  from  the  intfirnal 
developnient  of  Christian  doctrine  in  his  admirable  work,  Das  Urcbristen- 
thum,  seine  Schriftcn  und  Lehren,  S.  778. 


..200  A  UTHORITY  A  R  TIFICIA  LL  V  MIS  P  LA  CED.    [Book  1 1. 

Gospel  before  the  later  decades  of  the  second  century.  There 
was  especial  reason  for  siu-prise  that  no  notice  of  it  appeared 
in  the  Clementine  Homilies,  a  Jewish  Christian  production 
(probably  produced  at  Eome  about  a.d.  100^170),  pervaded 
by  an  intense  hostility  to  the  Pauline  Christianity  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  godhead  of  Christ,  and  not  likely  theref(3re  to 
be  sparing  of  criticism  on  a  Gospel  which  carries  that  doctrine 
on  its  front,  and  goes  far  beyond  Paul  in  its  revolt  from 
Judaism.  But  throughout  the  eighteen  and  a  half  homilies 
contained  in  the  solitary  Paris  codex,  only  two  phrases  which 
might  be,  yet  need  not  be,  Johannine  could  be  detected.  In 
1838,  however,  Dressel  found  in  the  Vatican  Library  a  second 
MS.,  containing  the  missing  close  of  the  book ;  and  in  1853 
published  the  whole  twenty  Homilies.  In  XIX.  22  we  meet 
with  the  following  unquestionable  reference  to  the  narrative  in 
John  ix.  1-3  :  "  Hence,  too,  our  Teacher  replies  to  those  wdio 
asked  him,  about  the  man  blind  from  birth  and  endowed  by 
him  with  vision,  whether  he  sinned  or  his  parents,  that  he 
was  born  blind, — '  neither  did  this  man  commit  sin  nor  his 
parents  ;  but  that  by  means  of  him  the  power  of  God  might  be 
made  manifest,  healing  the  sins  of  ignorance  '."*  Yet  here,  two 
remarkable  features  are  to  be  observed  :  (1)  The  citation  is  not 
word  for  word  in  agreement  with  the  Gospel ;  and  the  princi- 
pal deviation  of  phrase  is  found  also  twice  in  Justin  Martyr  ;  t 
(2)  the  doctrine  which  the  passage  elicits  from  the  man's 
congenital  blindness,  is  entirely  at  variance  with  that  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  ;  the  Ebionite  writer  deducing  the  blindness 
retrospectively  from  some  "  sin  of  ignorance,"  some  uncon- 
scious disregard  of  the  Mosaic  law  on  the  parents'  part  ; 
the  author  of  the  gospel  explaining  it  prospectkelij,  as  the 
condition  provided  for  the  light-giving  "  works  of  God." 
Both  these  features  may  be  due  to  the  writer  of  the  Homilies, 
who,  in  borrowing  from  the  Gospel,  may  have  made  his  own 

*  "O^ej'  Kcu  di8ci(TKaXos  ijjiuiv  77epi  rov  (K  yevfTi'iS  nrjpov  (-JDhn  ti'0Aoi/)  kui 
tlvajiXeylravTOi  iruf)  avrov  e^erd  [^ovaiv  kul  epCfOTwatv^  fl  ovros  Tjfiaprev  tj  oi 
yove'is  avTOv  iva  Tv(f)\os  yevvrjBrj,  inreKpivaTO  •  ovre  ovros  ri  rj/xaprev.  ovre  oi 
ynve'is  uvtov  '  dXX'  'iva  81  avrov  (pavepcodfj  t)  dvvafxis  roii  Qeov,  ri^s  ayvoias 
Icofxfvr]  TO.  ap-aprrifxara.     XIX.  22. 

t  Apol.  I.  22.  Ur)po\  fK  y€V(Ti-ii.  Dial.  c.  Tryph.  G9.  sk  yeverPjs  Trrjpol  real 
i:u)(f)ol  Ka'i  x'^^ol. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTAXTS  AXD    THE  SCRIPTL'RES.  201 

alterations  in  language  and  in  thought.  But  the  evangelical 
citations  in  the  Clementine  Homilies  have  a  peculiar  complex- 
ion, which  suggests  another  explanation  ;  not  one  of  them  is 
found  in  Mark  ;  only  four  could  come  from  Luke  ;  more  than 
a  hundred  present  themselves,  only  not  verhatim,  in  Matthew; 
and  eight  are  in  no  canonical  Gospel.  These  phenomena 
indicate  the  use,  b}'  this  writer,  of  some  source  unknown  to 
us, — a  source  which  might  also  be  resorted  to  by  the  author 
of  the  fourth  Gospel.  An  evangelist,  writing  in  the  post- 
apostolic  age,  and  wishing  to  give  a  fresh  version  of  the 
ministry  of  Christ,  would  not  break  with  the  historic  past, 
and  draw  on  his  own  invention  for  his  biographical  construc- 
tion ;  but  searching  among  the  traditions,  fixed  or  floating,  of 
Christ's  acts  and  words,  would  work  up  what  best  suited  his 
new  design.  These  same  materials  would  be  equally  available 
for  other  writers,  and  might  therefore  reappear  in  several 
forms.  Some  of  them  actually  do  so  appear  in  our  synoptical 
Gospels ;  and  others,  in  the  second  century,  may  no  less  have 
repeated  themselves,  with  similar  varieties,  in  the  less  histori- 
cal pages  of  Christian  compilers  and  advocates  of  that  age. 
We  cannot,  therefore,  safely  infer,  from  the  agreement  of  an 
anonymous  citation  with  a  passage  in  one  of  our  evangelists, 
tliat  it  is  talcen  from  his  Gospel,  and  proves  its  contemporary^ 
existence.  "Were  we,  however,  to  admit  the  inference  in  the 
present  instance,  it  would  still  leave  our  previous  chronological 
conclusion  undisturbed. 

The  farther  we  go  back,  the  more  do  we  encounter  this 
strange  phenomenon, — of  seeming  citation  fading  into  mere 
resemblance,  which  might  be  accidental,  and  which  memory 
would  hardly  leave  so  incomplete.  Often  as  a  passing  phrase 
of  Justin  Martyr  seems  to  have  in  it  something  of  the 
Johannine  riiifi,  the  sound  dies  away,  and  changes  too  soon 
to  come  from  that  full-toned  source ;  and  there  is  but  one 
]Dassage  on  which  an}'  stress  can  be  laid  as  a  probable  quota- 
tion. It  runs  thus :  "  For  Christ  said,  '  Unless  ve  be  Ijorn 
again,  ye  will  not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven.'  But 
that  it  is  impossible  for  those  who  have  once  been  born  to 
enter  the  wombs  of  those  that  bare  them,  is  plain  to  all."* 

*  Apol.  i.  Gl. 


202  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

On  reading  this  we  turn  at  once  to  John  iii,  3,  4,  as  its 
Scripture  source :  "  Jesus  answered  and  said  to  him,  Verily, 
verily,  I  say  to  thee,  unless  a  man  be  born  from  above  "  (for 
that  is  the  true  rendering),  "  he  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of  God." 
Nicodemus  saith  to  him,  "  How  can  a  man  be  born,  being 
old  ?  Can  he  enter  again  his  mother's  womb  and  be  born  ?  " 
[Jesus  answered]  "  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  thee,  Unless  a 
man  be  born  of  water  and  spirit,  he  cannot  enter  the  kingdom 
of  God."  Among  the  differences  between  the  two  passages 
we  may  especially  notice,  (1)  That  Christ  addresses  in  the 
Gospel  one  person  only ;  in  Justin,  a  iilurality.  (2)  The 
regeneration  in  Justin  is  only  a  being  "born  again;  "  in  the 
Gospel  a  birth  "from  above."  (3)  Justin  says,  "Ye  icUl  not 
enter;"  the  Gospel,  "He  cannot  enter."  (4)  The  Gospel 
speaks  of  the  "  kingclom  of  God ;  "  Justin  uses  Matthew's 
phrase,  "  the  kingdom  of  heaven.''  All  these  differences  might 
arise  from  the  looseness  of  memoriter  quotation,  intent  upon 
the  sense  rather  than  the  words.  But  in  that  case  they  are 
personal  to  Justin,  and,  as  accidents  of  his  literary  mood,  will 
not  appear  again.  It  so  happens,  however,  that  in  Eufinus's 
version  of  the  Clementine  Recognitions  we  find  the  same 
passage,  with  all  these  four  differences  reproduced  :  "  Verily, 
I  say  to  you  [plural] ,  Unless  a  man  shall  have  been  born 
over  again  of  water,  he  ivill  not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.'"*  This  concurrence  of  two  independent  writers  in  a 
set  of  variations  on  the  same  text  must  be  due  to  some 
common  cause  ;  and  what  else  can  it  be  than  the  use  by  both 
of  them  of  a  source  deviating  from  the  fourth  Gospel  in  these 
points. 

Nor  can  we  well  doubt  that  that  source  embodied  an  earlier 
tradition,  on  which  the  Johannine  version  afterwards  refined  ; 
for  the  re-birth,  which  in  the  former  is  boldly  identified  with 
baptism,  and  amounts  only  to  the  entrance  on  a  new  life,  is 
elevated  in  the  latter  into  a  fresh  creation  by  "  the  Spirit," 
the  initiation  from  above  into  a  divine  life.  That  this  higher 
doctrine  is  a  later  emergence  from  the  other,  must  be  evident 
to  any  one  who  has  studied  the  history  of  religious  ideas.     It 

*  Amen  dice  vobis,  "  Nisi  quis  deuuo  reuatus  fuerit  ex  aqua,  non  introibit 
in  regna  ccelorum,"  vi.  9. 


Chap,  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  203 

is  probable,  as  Yolkmar  has  shown,*  that  the  Johannine 
j)assage,  with  its  doctrine  of  new  birth,  is  only  the  divine 
saying  of  Christ,  in  its  last  stage  of  metamorphosis, — "  miless 
ye  turn,"  and  become  as  little  children,  ye  will  not  enter  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  (Mat.  xviii.  3). 

The  absence  of  distmct  Johannine  quotations  in  Justin 
Martyr  is  the  more  remarkable,  because  he  was  obviously 
influenced,  as  might  be  expected  from  a  Platonist,  by  the 
Gnostic  conceptions  which  were  afloat  in  his  time,  and  which 
embodied  themselves  in  many  of  the  phrases  characteristic  of 
the  fourth  Gospel, — Ao'^o^,  /uovoyei'rjcj  cwps,  Trv^J/ita,  «(>roc  ^iov. 
His  mind  was  drawn  into  the  same  current  Mhich  sweeps  so 
broad  and  strong  through  the  work  of  the  evangelist,  but  only 
at  its  first  and  feeble  drift ;  and  his  tentative  and  wavering 
movements  in  its  direction  would  have  been  not  less  impossi- 
ble, had  its  full  tide  set  in,  than  it  would  have  l^een  for  Plato, 
had  he  known  the  Newtonian  physics,  to  explain  as  he  does 
the  equilibration  of  the  earth  m  space. f  The  Logos  doctrine, 
especially,  he  presents  in  a  far  less  determinate  and  developed 
form  than  it  assumes  in  the  Gospel, — in  a  form  that  might 
naturally  come  after  Philo,  but  could  only  precede  the  evan- 
gelist. 

The  recovery  of  the  Greek  text  of  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas, 
and  the  natural  aifection  of  Tischendorf  for  everything  con- 
tained in  his  Sinaitic  Codex,  have  revived  the  interest  of  theo- 
logians in  that  production,  and,  for  a  while,  given  it  a  weight 
greater  than  justly  belongs  to  it  in  the  decision  of  the  Johannine 
controversy.  If  it  could  be  assigned,  as  Weizsacker:!:  supposes, 
to  so  early  a  date  as  a.d.  80,  or  even  to  the  reign  of  XeiTa 
(about  A.D.  97),  as  Hilgenfeld  contends ;  §  and  if,  further,  Keim 
were  right  in  affirming  the  author's  evident  acquaintance  with 
the  fourth  Gospel,  this  piece,  intrinsically  of  no  great  signifi- 
cance, would  solve  the  most  important  problem  in  sacred 
criticism.  An  impartial  judgment  will  hardly  find  in  it 
materials   for  winning  so  considerable  a  result.     The  dates 

"•  Ueber  Justin  deu  ^liirtyrer,  c.  iii.    Zurich,  1853. 

t  Phcedon,  108,  E,  109,  A. 

*  Zui-  Kritik  d.  Barnabasbriefes  :  S.  21,  sc^^.     1863. 

§  Nov.  Test,  extra  Cauonem  Receptum  :  Baru.  Epist.  Prol.  xi.  scqfi. 

II  Geschichte  Jesu  von  Nazara  :  B.  i.  p.  141-143. 


204  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

suggested  for  its  composition  are  recommended  by  evidence  so 
slender  as  to  remain  simply  conjectural ;  and  they  are  rendered 
improbable,  by  some  indications,  which  can  hardly  mislead  us, 
of  a  later  time.  A  passage,  for  instance,  in  Matthew's  Gospel 
is  quoted  with  the  formula,  ''  Asxth  written,'' — a  phrase  never 
employed  but  of  the  Old  Testament  books,  which  were  read  as 
sacred  scriptures;  and  the  Christian  books  were  not  placed 
upon  that  level  till  some  way  into  the  second  century.*  The 
whole  cast  of  thought  and  sentiment  is  in  harmony  with  this 
indication  :  Judaism  is  left  behind,  except  as  furnishing  a  fund 
of  types  of  Christian  incidents.  The  Pauline  period  and  manner 
are  in  the  past,  with  the  controversies  that  formed  their 
characteristics ;  the  Alexandrine  theology  is  in  the  ascendant, 
turning  the  literature  of  religion  into  a  frost-work  of  precarious 
imagery  and  correspondences,  yet  still  with  a  lingering  pla,y 
about  biblical  texts  and  histories,  and  not  yet  elevated  into  a 
speculative  gnosis,  aspiring  to  be  philosophical  and  spiritual 
at  once.  These  are  the  features  which  mark  the  first  quarter 
of  the  second  century.  By  the  aid  of  a  passage  in  the  six- 
teenth chapter,  the  date  may  perhaps  be  more  precisely  fixed. 
Contrasting  the  local  and  legal  worship  of  Jews  with  the 
spiritual  temple  of  the  Christians,  the  writer  appeals  to 
the  Jews'  own  Scriptures:  "The  Lord  saith,  'Heaven  is 
my  throne,  and  the  earth  my  footstool.  What  house  will 
ye  build  for  me,  or  where  is  the  place  of  my  rest  ? '  Know 
that  their  hope  is  vain.  And  again  he  saith,  '  They  that 
have  destroyed  this  temple  themselves  shall  build  it  up.'  It 
is  coming  to  pass :  for  through  their  going  to  war  it  has  been 
destroyed  by  the  enemy  ;  and  now  they  themselves,  as  servants 
of  their  enemies,  will  have  to  rebuild  it."  The  reference  here, 
there  can  be  little  doubt,  is  to  a  contemporary  event  of  the 
second  Jewish  war  under  Hadrian,  occasioned  by  the  rebellion 
of  Barchocbarr,  a.d.  132-135,  when  the  temple  was  utterly 
destroyed  and  its  platform  levelled.  The  Jews,  even  then 
hoping  and  entreating  that  it  might  rise  again,  were  permitted 
to  commence  a  reconstruction.  But,  when  the  work  was 
finished,  the  temple  was   dedicated   to   Jupiter   Capitolinus. 

*  See  Barnabas  unci  Johauues,  von  H.  Holzmann  :    Zeitschrift  fiir  wis- 
sensch.     Theologie.    1871.    p.  350. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  205 

This  was  what  was   "  commg   to   pass,"    and   proving   that 
"  their  hope  was  vain."  * 

If,  in  reading  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  we  assumed  that  all 
the  elements  of  Christology  which  transcend  the  synoptical 
Gospels  must  be  drawn  from  the  fourth,  we  should  certainly 
pronounce  it  dependent  upon  both.  The  pre-existence  of  "  the 
Son  of  God,"  his  superhuman  nature,  his  "  manifestation  in 
the  flesh,"  are  dwelt  upon  in  a  way  foreign  to  the  earlier 
evangelists.  But  so  are  they  even  in  the  undoubted  Pauline 
writings,  and  more  emphatically  in  the  epistles  to  the  Hebrews, 
the  Colossians,  and  the  Ephesians ;  the  growth  of  doctrine 
continually  receding  from  the  first  Messianic  form,  and  passing 
through  many  stadia  to  the  ultimate  definitions  of  the  creeds. 
Two  of  these  stadia  are  represented  by  the  epistle  of  Barnal)as 
and  the  Johannine  Gospel  respectively ;  and  our  immediate 
question  is.  Which  occupies  the  earlier  place?  The  chief 
indications  of  precedence  in  the  Gospel  are  two.  Barnabas 
represents  the  death  and  the  resurrection  of  Christ  as  acts  of 
Ms  oicn,  in  conformity  with  a  command  of  his  Father,t  just 
as  the  evangelist  does  (John  x.  18) ;  and  he  takes  the  brazen 
serpent  as  a  type  of  Christ,  J  like  John  iii.  14.  But  neither  of 
these  representations  is  so  peculiar  as  to  have  no  possible 
source  but  the  fourth  Gospel.  Paul  (Phil.  ii.  5-8)  treats  the 
humiliation  and  sacrifice  of  Christ  as  voluntary ;  and  though 
he  ascribes  to  God  the  raising  him  from  death  to  heavenly  life, 
the  post-apostolic  age  was  not  content  without  carrying  the 
Saviour's  agency  through  the  whole  economy  of  redemption, 
and  making  it  all  the  execution  of  a  predicted  and  intended 
plan.  We  find,  accordingly,  this  same  idea  in  other  writings 
of  the  period;  e.g.,  the  Sibylline  oracles  and  the  Ignatian 
letters.^  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  one  of  these 
writers  borrowed  the  conception  from  another  :  it  lived  in  the 
Christian  imagination  of  their  time,  and,  drawn  thence  by  all, 
was  originally  applied  by  each.  As  for  the  brazen  serpent,  it  is 
only  by  singling  it  out  from  the  forest  of  types  by  which  it  is 

*  Cf.  Pfleiderer,  Das  Urchristeuthum :  S.  067. 
t  C.  5.  :  C.  12. 

§  Orac.  Sib.  viii.  .31-3.     Ka\  ror  otto  ecpi^i.^voi'  dvaXvaas.     Igu-  ad  SmjTn.  2. 
ave(TTrj(T(v  eavruv  ap.  Holzmann,  B.  &  J.  p.  338. 


2o6  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

environed,  and  setting;  it  forth  as  if  it  stood  alone,  that  the 
critic  can  suggest  a  suspicion  of  its  being  a  stolen  analogy. 
When  the  whole  of  the  Old  Testament  is  ransacked  for  pro- 
phecies and  types,  and  objects  and  incidents  innumerable  from 
Abraham  to  Isaiah  are  turned  into  evangelic  symbols,  how 
should  the  serpent  in  the  wilderness  escape  ?  or,  if  resorted  to, 
be  mare  symptomatic  of  imitation  than  any  other  equally 
artificial  play  of  fancy  ?  The  author  of  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon 
had  already  treated  the  brazen  serpent  as  "  a  sign  of  salvation," 
inasmuch  as  "he  that  turned  himself  towards  it  was  not  saved 
by  the  thing  that  he  saw,  but  by  Thee  that  art  the  Saviour  of 
all ;  *  to  say  nothing  of  the  manifold  use  of  the  same  emblem 
by  Philo.f  Had  the  writer  of  the  letter  really  been  repro- 
ducing John  iii.  14,  he  could  not  have  missed,  as  he  has 
missed,  the  whole  tone  of  that  passage ;  least  of  all,  have 
dropped  the  one  essential  word  {v\pw^iivai),  in  which  (as  again 
John  xii.  32)  the  whole  life  of  the  thought  is  contained. 

While  these  slight  coincidences  imply  no  interdependence  of 
the  two  writers,  there  are  differences  on  a  much  larger  scale 
which  completely  separate  them.  Barnabas  (v.)  affirms  that 
Jesus,  when  appointing  his  apostles,  selected  men  "lawless 
bevond  all  measure  of  sinfulness,"  in  order  to  show  that  he 
came  to  call  not  the  righteous,  but  sinners,  to  repentance. 
Could  any  one  write  thus  who  knew  the  words  which  met 
Nathanael  at  his  call,  "  Behold  an  Israelite  indeed,  in  whom 
there  is  no  guile  "  '?  or  who  had  before  him  the  story  of  "  the 
disciple  whom  Jesus  loved  "  ?  There  was  a  time  in  the  post- 
apostolic  age  when,  partly  an  antinomian  impulse,  partly  the 
fact  that  one  of  the  twelve  had  been  a  "publican"  and  the 
Gentile  apostle  a  persecutor,  gave  rise  to  this  extravagant 
conception  of  the  character  of  the  first  missionaries  of  the 
gospel ;  and  no  slight  approach  to  it  is  made  in  the  exagger- 
ated self-disparagement  attributed  to  Paul  by  the  writer  of 
1  Timothy  i.  12-15.  The  epistle  of  Barnabas  advances  upon 
this ;  but  it  is  not  an  advance  in  the  Johannine  direction,  or 
compatible  with  the  presence  of  such  an  influence. 

*  xvi.  6,  7. 

t  De  Agricultura,  §  22,  Legg.  Alleg.  B.  ii.  §  20,  21,  referred  to  by  Holzmaun, 
B.  &  J.  p.  340. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AXD    THE  SCRIPTURES.  207 

In  the  evangelist's  account  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus  after 
he  had  risen  from  the  dead,  there  is  no  notice  of  the  ascension  ; 
and  the  interviews  with  his  disciples  which  are  recorded  (not 
reckoning  the  appendix,  ch.  xxi.)  are  at  the  beginning  and  the 
end  of  a  period  of  eight  days.*  In  the  epistle  of  Barnabas  the 
cessation  of  the  Jewish  sabbath,  and  the  substitution  by 
Christians  of  a  Sunday  celebration,  are  justified  by  the  con- 
sideration that  "  on  the  eighth  day  "  (i.e.  the  day  succeeding 
the  seventh,  or  the  first  day  of  the  week),  "  Jesus  both  rose 
from  the  dead,  and  appeared,  and  ascended  into  heaven. "f 
This  is  in  accordance  with  the  form  of  tradition  which  is  pre- 
served in  Luke's  Gospel,  and  probably  with  the  more  ancient 
materials  which  formed  the  l)asis  of  the  whole  synoptical 
history  ;  and  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  from  this  side  the 
--^^'riter  of  the  Epistle  may  have  been  in  possession  of  such  a 
version  of  the  facts.  But  he  could  never  have  reproduced  it, 
without  a  hint  of  hesitation,  if  the  fourth  Gospel,  with  its 
plain  contradiction,  had  been  present  to  his  hand. 

But  the  decisive,  though  not  the  most  palpable  test  of  the 
relative  order  of  these  two  productions  lies  in  their  different 
conceptions  of  the  person  of  Christ.  On  his  divine  side,  he 
appears  in  the  epistle  as  "the  Son  of  God,"  to  whom  the 
Father  addresses  the  words,  "  Let  us  make  man  in  our  image," 
who  is  Lord  of  the  earth,  who  has  appeared  in  the  flesh,  and 
died  to  abolish  death,  and  risen  again  to  show  the  way  of  life 
beyond,  t  The  Christology  is  not  indeed  a  reproduction  of  the 
Pauline  type  of  doctrine ;  for,  instead  of  admitting  that 
Christ  "was  born  of  the  seed  of  David  according  to  the  flesh  " 
(Piom  i.  3,)  the  author  denies  his  humanitj^  saying  that  "  he 
is  not  the  son  of  man,  but  the  son  of  God."§  This  ignoring 
of  heredity  and  of  a  human  soul  in  Christ,  approaches  Docet- 
ism  ;  ])ut  is  saved  from  it  by  the  assumption  of  An  Incariiation. 
But  in  deviating  from  the  Pauline  point  of  view,  the  writer  ])y 
no  means  reaches  the  Johannine.  We  nowhere  come  across 
the  characteristic  doctrine  of  the  fourth  Gospel  with  its  sub- 
sidiary conceptions,  the  Logos,  co-essential  with  God,  and 
immanent  in  the  world  as  its  light,  its  life,  its  truth.     No  one 

*  XX.  i.  19,  26.  t  C.  15,  ad  fin. 

-  C.  V.  §  C.  xii. 


2o8  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

who  has  stood  in  presence  of  the  Johannine  Christ,  and 
entered  into  the  marvellous  thought  whence  the  delineation 
comes,  can  pass  to  the  epistle  of  Barnabas,  without  being 
consciously  thrown  back  upon  a  balder  and  prior  theology, 
which  could  never  l)e  reproduced  by  one  trained  in  the  higher 
school.  Unless  we  invert  the  natural  seasons  of  growing 
thought,  the  Epistle  could  only  arise  when  the  Gospel  was 
still  in  the  future. 

Can  we,  then,  sum  up  the  testimony  of  our  witnesses  to  any 
definite  result '?  From  various  quarters  the  line  of  their  evi- 
dence seems  to  converge  upon  one  time  for  the  origin  of  this 
Gospel.  Probably  not  known  to  Justin  (about  155),  but 
possibly  to  the  author  of  the  Clementines  (about  170)  ;  not  in 
the  hands  of  Valentinus  (about  160),  but  in  those  of  his  dis- 
ciples, Ptolemseus  and  Herakleon  (ISO  and  190) ;  not  used  by 
Marcion  (about  150),  but  by  Marcionites  of  the  next  genera- 
tion ;  cited  by  ApoUinaris  (about  175)  ;  for  the  first  time 
named  by  Theophilus  of  Antioch  (about  180)  ;  the  fourth 
Gospel  would  seem  to  have  become  known  in  the  sixth  or 
seventh  decade  of  the  second  century,  and  to  have  ceased  to 
be  anonymous  in  the  eighth.  Time  must  be  allowed,  prior  to 
these  dates,  for  its  gradual  distribution  from  the  place  of  its 
nativity  to  the  literary  centres  of  the  church  and  of  the 
Gnostic  sects.  But  even  the  most  liberal  allowance,  which, 
consistently  with  the  habits  of  the  age  and  the  organization 
of  Christendom,  can  be  claimed  for  this  purpose,  will  leave  us 
a  long  way  from  the  apostolic  generation.  We  cannot  con- 
fidently name  any  earlier  date  than  the  fifth  decade  of  the 
century.  This  conclusion  will  not  be  affected,  even  if  we  allow 
Justin  to  have  had  the  Gospel  in  his  hands. 

Whether,  however,  the  internal  evidence  will  confirm  or 
correct  this  provisional  conclusion  still  remains  to  be  seen. 

B.  Internal  Character. 

The  oldest  account  we  have  respecting  the  authorship  of 
the  fourth  Gospel  is  contained,' not  indeed  within  its  own 
proper  text,  but  in  the  Editor's  Appendix,  which  counts  as  its 
last  chapter.     There  it  is  expressly  referred  to  ''  the  disciple 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS   AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  209 

whom  Jesus  loved  "  :  "  This  is  the  disciple  who  testifieth  of 
these  things  and  Kvotc  tlicse  tlniujs  :  and  we  know  that  his  testi- 
mony is  true  "  (xxi.  24).  As  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
the  Gospel  ever  appeared  without  its  supplementary  chapter, 
we  learn  from  these  words  that  it  was  not  given  to  the  world 
in  its  alleged  author's  lifetime  :  for  the  very  purpose  of  the 
recital  which  they  close  is,  to  remove  the  surprise  at  the  death 
of  one  supposed  to  be  reserved  "  till  the  Lord  should  come." 
This  motive  would  be  most  operative  soon  after  the  disciple's 
decease,  if  he  and  it  were  well  and  definitely  known,  and  his 
departure  occasioned  a  shock  conspicuous  in  date  and  place. 
But  if  he  were  simply  an  unnamed  member  of  a  group  dis- 
persed, there  would  be  nothing  to  prevent  whole  decades 
passing  that  were  silent  of  his  life  or  death,  and  the  prophecy 
would  first  be  charged  with  failure  through  the  mere  absence 
of  any  claimant  on  supernatural  longevity.  The  correcting 
answer  therefore  to  the  charge  of  failure,  viz.,  that  the 
supposed  prophecy  was  never  uttered,  might  come  at  any 
time,  and  does  not  require  to  be  brought  within  the  limits  of 
the  apostolic  generation.  And  in  issuing  a  gospel  as  a  pro- 
duction of  "  the  beloved  disciple,"  the  editor,  at  whatever 
date,  was  ])ound  to  give  the  correcting  answer  :  for  if  the 
Evangelist  "■  who  wrote  these  things"  were  the  very  person 
pointed  out  for  survival,  Avhy  can  he  not  speak  for  himself? 
AVhat  need  of  an  editor  to  formulate  and  accredit  his  own 
deepest  personal  experiences '? 

Turning  from  the  appendix  to  the  Gospel  itself,  we  do  not 
lind  the  author  claiming  identity  with  "  the  beloved  disciple." 
Once  only  docs  he  speak  of  the  source  of  his  narrative,  as 
coming  from  an  ej-e-witness  :  in  relating  the  incident  of  the 
spear- wound  in  the  side  of  Jesus,  he  says  (xix.  35)  :  "  And  he 
that  hath  seen  it,  hath  borne  witness,  and  his  witness  is  trust- 
worthv."  These  are  words  that  can  inform  the  reader  onlv 
of  a  third  person's  testimony.  And  though  the  following- 
clause,  "  And  he  {KaKilvofj)  knoweth  that  he  saith  true,"  has 
been  sup]iosed,  as  a  declaration  of  consciousness,  to  be  pre- 
dicable  only  of  the  writer  himself,  the  inference  is  barred  l)y 
the  demonstrative  pronoun  iKilvoi;,  which  no  speaker  can 
use  of  liiinsclf.    It  is  as  if  the  author  said,  "  And  that  is  a  man 

p 


210  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  li, 

who  does  not  speak  at  random,  but  only  when  sure  that  his 
word  is  true." 

The  eye-witness  thus  characterized  is  left,  without  further 
mark.  The  conjecture  that  he  was  "the  beloved  disciple" 
rests  only  on  the  previous  mention  of  that  disciple  as  standing 
beneath  the  cross  with  the  three  Marys  (xix.  25-27).  But  the 
narrative  does  not  forbid  us  to  think  of  others  also  as  being 
near  :  nor  is  it  easy  to  see  why  the  author,  who  so  emphati- 
cally insists  on  the  value  of  his  eye-witness,  should  silently 
forego  the  advantage  of  his  identity  with  the  favourite 
disciple. 

To  the  Evangelist  then,  the  eye-witness,  whether  he  were 
"  the  beloved  disciple  "  or  not,  was  an  outside  person ;  and 
his  editor  alone  is  responsible  for  the  statement  that  the 
"witness"  in  question  "wrote  these  things.' 

But  further,  neither  Evangelist  nor  Editor  identifies  "the 
beloved  disciple  "  witli  John,  the  son  of  Zebedee.  Three 
times  he  appears  in  the  Gospel,*  twice  in  the  Appendix  ;t  in 
every  instance,  under  the  veil  of  the  same  general  description 
— "  the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved."  He  is  not  introduced 
to  the  reader  till  the  last  supper  needs  him  to  draw  from  Jesus 
the  secret  of  the  betrayer's  name  ;  when  it  is  said  "  There 
was  at  the  table  reclining  on  Jesus'  bosom  one  of  his  disciples, 
wdiom  Jesus  loved.  Simon  Peter  therefore  beckoneth  to  him, 
and  saith  unto  him,  '  Tell  us  who  it  is  of  whom  he  speaketh.' 
He,  leaning  back,  as  he  was,  on  Jesus'  breast,  saith  unto  him, 
'  Lord,  who  is  it '? '  Jesus  therefore  answereth,  '  He  it  is,  for 
whom  I  shall  dip  the  sop,  and  give  it  him.'  "  The  second 
passage  relates  the  dying  injunction  to  the  disciple  to  be  as  a 
son  to  the  mother  of  Jesus  :  and  the  third,  the  visit  to  the 
empty  sepulchre,  at  which  "  the  other  disciple  outran  Peter." 
This  completes  the  picture  which  is  given  us.  In  two  of  the 
instances  the  unknown  figure  is  associated  with  Peter,  in 
each  case  with  a  curious  suggestion  of  a  certain  advantage 
over  him,  and  yet  concession  to  him,  of  a  leading  part  as  chief. 
But  the  incofinito  remains  unbroken.  Had  we  been  left  to  the 
fourth  Gospel  alone,  we  should  never  have  heard  of  either 
James  or  John.      Of  those  who  formed  the  inner  circle  of 

''-  xiii.  23.  xix.  26,  27.  xx.  2-5.  t  xxi.  7,  20. 


Chap.  Il.l      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES. 


211 


"disciples"  ("apostles"  they  are  not  called)  the  writer  names 
but  seven ;  and  among  them  the  sons  of  Zebedee  are  not  found. 
As  the  Evangelist  recognizes  the  limitation  of  this  inner  circle 
to  twelve,  he  leaves  us  to  seek  "  the  beloved  disciple  "  among 
the  unnamed  five.  The  mode  in  which  the  Church  tradition 
worked  out  the  problem  has  already  been  indicated.  The 
synoptic  gospels  supplied  the  list  of  missing  names.  Ever 
since  the  Apocalypse  appeared,  the  seer  was  known  to  bear 
one  of  them  :  and  to  whom  was  Jesus  Christ  more  likely  to 
convey  the  Eevelation  which  God  gave  him  of  things  to  come, 
than  to  "  the  disciple  whom  he  loved,"  to  whom  he  had  con- 
fided the  traitor's  name,  and  committed  the  guardianship  of 
his  mother "?  And  so  it  was  inferred  that  the  Prophet  John 
was  no  other  than  "  the  beloved  disciple,"  and  therefore  "  the 
beloved  disciple  "  the  younger  son  of  Zebedee. 

The  conclusion  seems  forced  upon  us,  that  the  Apostolical 
authorship  of  the  fourth  Gospel  receives  no  adequate  support 
from  either  claim  on  its  own  part,  or  competent  external 
testimony. 

Does  the  internal  diaracter  of  this  Gospel  commend  it  to 
us  as  probably  the  authentic  record  of  an  intimate  disciple '? 
The  moment  we  ask  this  question,  we  feel  the  need  of  some 
standard  by  which  to  measure  the  probability  of  its  statements. 
The  deep  and  tender  sympathy  which  the  evangelist  awakens 
surrounds  him  with  eager  advocates,  who  find  his  story  self- 
evidently  true,  and  who  think  it  enough  to  say,  that  dramatic 
episodes  like  the  cure  of  the  man  born  blind,  and  the  raising 
of  Lazarus,  could  l)e  drawn  only  from  the  life ;  that  the 
conversation  at  Jacob's  well,  and  the  discourse  before  the 
betrayal,  transcend  the  inventive  range  of  mere  spiritual 
genius  ;  and  that,  unless  Christ  were  really  of  the  higher 
nature  assigned  him  in  this  Gospel,  his  personality  would  not 
be  on  a  scale  adequate  to  such  a  result  as  Christendom.  But 
such  subjective  rules  of  possibility  are  valid  only  so  long  as 
they  encounter  no  objective  contradiction  ;  and  must  1)0 
subject  to  correction  from  historical  fact  where  known,  and  to 
a  comparison  of  parallel  testimonies  where  doubtful.  Tn 
Josephus,  in  the  synoptists,  and  in  the  writings  which  mark 
the   successive  phases  of  Christian  doctrine,  we  have  some 

p  2 


212  A  UTHORITY  A  R  TIF  I  CI  A  LL  V  M ISP  LA  CED.    \  Book  1 1 . 

means  of  checking  and  testing  the  narrative  of  the  evangehst ; 
and  in  every  instance  we  meet  with  gromids  for  distrusting 
his  pretension  to  be  an  original  witness.     No  companion  of 
Jesus  could  have  placed  the  scene  of  the  Baptist's  testimony 
to  Jesus  in  "  Bethany  beyond  Jordan,"* — a  place  unknown 
to  geography  ;  or  have  invested  Annas  as  well  as  Caiaphas 
with  the  prerogatives  of  high  priest;!  or  have  represented 
that  office  as  annual  ;  \  or  have  so  forgotten  Elijah  and  Nahum 
as  to  make  the  Pharisees  assert  that  "  out  of  Galilee  ariseth 
no  prophet. "§     No  Israelite,  sharing  the  memory  of  the  Aaoc 
Siou,  could,  like  the  evangelist,  place  himself  superciliously 
outside   his    compatriots,    speak  of  their  most  sacred  anni- 
versaries  as    "feasts   of  the   Jens,"    and    reckon    the   Jews 
among   the   common    t^mj   of   the    world ;  still  less,   display 
towards  them  an  ever  pitiless  and  scornful  spirit,  and  treat 
them  as  children  of  the  Devil,  deaf  to  every  divine  voice,  and 
doomed  to  die  in  their   sins.     They  appear  on  the  canvas  of 
his  narrative,  painted  with  a  monotony  of  shadow  which  has 
no  character  in  itself,  and  serves  only  to  throw  forward  the 
effulgent  figure  in  the  centre  :  there  is  nothing  too   silly  for 
them  to  say,  too  wicked  for  them  to  do  :  they  pervert  all  that 
they  hear ;  are  destitute  of  any  spiritual  apprehension  ;  care 
only  for  "  signs  and  wonders,"  and  for  these  chiefly  when, 
by  means  of  them,  they  "  eat  and  are  filled."     Is  this  the 
tone  of  a  son  and  a  brother  even  to  the  kmdred  he  has  left  ? 
does  such  bitterness  of  insult  suit  the  temper  of  the  beloved 
disciple,  the  bosom  friend  of  Him  who  wept  over  his  Jerusalem  ? 
Is   it   possible   that   we  are  here  in  presence  of  one  of  the 
twelve,  who  looked  askance  at  Paul's  emergence  from  Judaism, 
and  threw  on  himself  alone  the  responsibility  of  his  dangerous 
Gentile  gospel  ?     "With  Paul,  neither  heart  nor  faith  was  ever 


*  John  i.  28  (the  true  reading  is  Bethany,  not  Betliabara). 

t  John  xviii.  19,  22,  24.  "  Annas  therefore  sent  him  ('  not  had  sent  him ') 
bound  to  Caiaphas  the  high  priest." 

X  John  xi.  49,  51,  xviii.  13.  H.  Holtzmann  attributes  this  mistake  to  the 
author's  familiarity  with  the  practice  in  Asia  ^Minor  of  annually  changing  the 
iiigh-priest  of  the  new  temple  dedicated  to  the  worship  of  the  Emperor;  the 
year  being  called  by  his  name.  Lehrb.  d.  Einleitung  in  d.  N.  T.  469  {2^^ 
Aufl.). 

§  John  vii.  52.     See  1  Kin»;s  xvii.  1;  Nahum  i.  1. 


Chap.  Il.i      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  213 

SO  alienated  from  the  traditions  and  inheritance  of  his  people 
as  we  find  the  spirit  of  the  fourth  Gospel  to  be.  So  far  as  he 
was  an  exile  from  them,  he  grieved  at  the  separation  :  he 
looked  back  on  them  with  regretful  affection,  and  forward  to 
reunion  with  yearning  hope.  The  universal  religion  which 
he  had  gained  was  not  opposed  to  theirs,  but  its  proper  con- 
summation, if  they  would  only  take  it  all.  They  were  cus- 
todians of  its  oracles,  the  organs  of  its  historical  conveyance  ; 
and,  when  their  dark  hour  Avas  past,  they  would  enter  into 
its  imperishable  light.  That,  while  the  Gentile  missionary 
speaks  of  his  Ijrethren  in  this  tender  voice,  one  of  the  elder 
apostles  should  set  his  face  as  flint  against  them,  and  treat 
their  place  in  the  world  as  the  stronghold  of  all  that  is  earthly 
and  undivine,  is  hard  to  conceive  ;  and  the  contrast  suggests 
rather  the  suspicion  that  we  are  transported  into  the  age  of 
Marcion  and  the  anti- Jewish  Gnostics,  whose  Christianity 
was  not  a  development  but  a  defiance  of  the  Israelite  religion. 
If  the  synoptical  materials  embody  traditions  flowing  from 
the  original  apostolic  circle,  and  represent  the  order  of  ideas 
prevailing  there,  every  feature  which  strongly  contrasts  the 
fourth  Gospel  with  them  renders  it  improbable  that  it  pro- 
ceeds from  the  same  group  of  disciples.  So  great  and  all- 
pervadmg  is  that  contrast,  not  only  in  historical  matter  and 
literary  form,  in  the  scenery,  the  chronology,  the  order,  of  the 
story,  but  in  the  whole  theory  of  religion  assumed,  and  the 
personal  delineation  of  Christ,  that  the  improbability  reaches 
a  high  intensity.  The  single  omission  of  all  demoniacal 
possessions  by  the  evangelist  conclusively  removes  him,  in 
time  and  place  and  culture,  from  the  Palestinian  school.  If 
narratives  of  this  class  presented  merely  cases  of  ordinary 
miracle,  in  which  some  morbid  deflection  of  nature  was 
corrected  by  the  benefi-cent  interposition  of  God,  a  selecting 
hand  might  conceivably  drop  them  out  in  favour  of  other  and 
more  striking  samples  of  the  same  type.  But  the  "  casting 
out  of  evil  spirits  "  does  not  belong  to  the  same  category  as 
the  raising  of  the  dead  and  giving  sight  to  the  blind :  it  is 
cited  with  a  different  significance,  and  is  the  expression  of  a 
difi'erent  Christology.  The  bodily  and  mental  disorders  which 
supply    the    material    for    these   incidents   are   not   human 


214  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

infirmities,  remedied  by  a  divine  healing  art,  not  short-comings 
in  creation,  set  right  by  the  Creator  ;  but  are  themselves  as 
preternatural  as  their  removal, — a  violent  raid  committed  on 
helpless  men  by  demons  of  superhuman  power,  who  can  be 
driven  off  only  by  Messiah  with  his  superdemonic  power.  The 
whole  proceeding  in  this  case  lies  out  in  the  mythological 
sphere,  where  evil  spirits  have  free  range  to  play  with  their 
victims  till  the  advent  of  One  who  is  to  sweep  them  from  the 
upper  world,  like  pirates  from  the  sea.  The  interest  of  the 
transaction  is  in  the  encounter  of  these  natural  foes,  in  the 
instinctive  recognition  of  their  superior  and  destroyer  by 
beings  more  knowing  than  men,  and  in  the  shriek  of  final 
defeat  by  which  they  confessed  their  vanquisher.  It  is  as  a 
special  and  decisive  mark  of  Messianic  identity  that  the 
synoptical  exorcisms  are  offered  ;  and  the  important  part 
which  they  play  in  the  earlier  Gospels  shows  how  strong  was 
the  hold  of  this  evidential  argument  on  the  minds  of  the 
Palestinian  Christians.  No  one  who  was  tinctured  with  the 
Jewish  demonology  could  fail  to  feel  its  force ;  and  the  absolute 
disappearance  of  it  in  the  fourth  Gospel  indicates  that  we  are 
there  transported  to  a  different  spiritual  climate,  where  this 
kind  of  mythology  cannot  live. 

Nor  is  it  possible  to  piece  together,  as  expressions  of  the 
same  personality,  the  synoptical  discourses  of  Jesus  and  those 
of  the  fourth  Gospel ;  and  the  same  circle  of  disciples  cannot  be 
answerable  for  both.  If  it  be  true  (Mark  iv.  34)  that  "with- 
out a  parable  spake  he  not  unto  them,"  no  address  of  his  is 
given  us  by  the  last  evangelist ;  for  of  this  picturesque  and 
winning  type  of  public  teaching,  so  locally  true,  so  personally 
characteristic,  not  a  single  instance  appears  in  his  narrative. 
Instead  of  these  coloured  Hghts  upon  the  Teacher's  doctrine, 
we  have  it  wrapped  in  dark  disguise  :  the  concrete  language 
of  life,  born  in  the  field,  the  boat,  the  olive-ground,  is  ex- 
changed for  the  abstract  forms  of  philosophical  conception  ; 
the  terse  maxims  of  conduct  and  epigrams  of  moral  wisdom, 
for  doctrinal  enigmas  and  hinted  mysteries  of  sentiment.  The 
simple  directness  with  which,  in  the  earlier  reports,  the 
speaker  advances  to  his  end,  and  leaves  it,  is  here  replaced 
by  the  windings  of  subtle  reflection,  and  the  repetitions  of 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS   AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  215 

unsatisfied  controversy.  We  pass  from  tlie  breath  and  sun- 
sliine  of  tlie  hills  to  the  studious  air  and  nocturnal  lamp  of 
the  library  ;  and  exchange  the  music  of  living  voices,  never 
t^vice  the  same,  for  a  monotonous  pitch  of  speech,  which  flows 
unvaried  through  the  lips  of  Jesus  or  the  historian,  of  Xico- 
demus  or  the  woman  of  Samaria,  of  this  disciple  or  of  that. 
We  find  Jesus  quoting  before  one  audience  what,  months 
before,  he  had  said  to  another,  and  charging  on  later  oppo- 
nents the  persecution  he  had  suffered  at  the  hands  of  earlier, 
as  if  the  scene  and  the  actor  had  never  changed,*— a  sure 
sign  that  the  thread  of  narrative  connection  is  not  the  living 
sequence  of  history,  but  the  author's  own  memory  of  what  he 
has  recently  written.  Hardly,  indeed,  does  the  evangelist 
attempt  to  conceal  his  own  hand  in  the  free  composition  of 
his  dialogues  ;  for  unlike  the  open-air  addresses  of  the  synop- 
tists,  or  the  confidences  of  Jesus  with  the  inner  circle  of  dis- 
ciples, some  of  the  most  impressive  of  them,  as  the  conversa- 
tion with  Nicodemus  and  at  Jacob's  well,  have  no  witness  but 
the  interlocutors  themselves,  who  cannot  be  supposed  to  have 
taken  notes  in  the  service  of  future  history. 

A\'hen  an  actor  in  some  great  crisis  of  human  affairs  reads 
the  record  of  it  which  has  been  left  by  his  companions,  and 
finds  it  recall  to  him  many  things  which  they  have  not  told, 
and  perhaps  disturb  him  by  false  lights  thrown  on  real  trans- 
actions, he  may  naturally  resolve  to  complete  and  correct  their 
work  by  contributions  of  his  own.  In  executing  this  purpose, 
he  will  necessarily  work  upon  their  main  program,  and  find 
room  within  its  outline  for  filling  in  the  forgotten  details,  and 
retouching  the  faded  or  mistaken  colours.  The  story  will  act 
itself  out  on  the  same  field  and  in  the  same  period :  only  it 
will  be  enriched  by  new  episodes,  and  gain  some  varieties  of 
light.  But  the  fourth  evangelist,  totally  disregarding  the 
organic  scheme  of  his  predecessors,  constructs  the  history 
afresh ;  so  that  the  sparse  points  of  contact  (only  four  prior 
to  the  last  act)  t  are  but  tantalizing  concurrences,  that  supply 

*  Compare  John  x.  25,  27,  and  viii.  23,  43,  47,  and  x.  1-G  ;  also  xiii.  33,  and 
viii.  21  ;  also  vii.  21,  and  v.  1-16. 

t  The  temple  cleansing,  ii.  13-17  ;  the  feeding  the  five  thousand,  vi.  5-13  ; 
the  walking  on  the  sea,  vi.  17-20  ;  the  anointing  by  the  woman  at  Bethany, 
xii.  3-8. 


2i6  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

no  links  of  consecution,  and  leave  the  new  story  completely 
outside  the  old.     The  ministry  of  Jesus  is  spread  upon  a  dif- 
ferent ground  plan  of  time ;  including,  instead  of  one  great 
national  festival,  no  fewer  than  five,  and  claiming  apparently, 
in  the  writer's  conception,  not  one  year  but  three.     And  it  is 
transposed,  in  the  main,  to  a  different  local  theatre,  its  Galilean 
passages  being  a  mere  accidental  by-play,  and  the  whole  stress 
and  glory  of  the  mission  being  concentrated  and  retained  in 
and  near  Jerusalem.     Even  if  these  contrasted  representations 
were  two  fragments  of  one  integral  history,  no  writer  design- 
ing to  remedy  the  imperfection  of  the  first  could  contribute 
the  second  without  giving  the  key  to  their  union.     Far  from 
attempting  this,  the  last  evangelist  has  constructed  his  Gospel 
into  an  organic  whole,  more  complete  than  we  obtain  from  the 
previous  compilers ;  nor  is  there  the  least  appearance  of  his 
having  left  large  acts  of  the  drama  for  others  to  supply.     As 
mere  varieties  of  the  same  original  testimony,  these  differences 
are  utterly  inexplicable.     And,  if  we  have  to  choose  between 
their  historical  values,  the  decision  can  hardly  l:)e  doubtful. 
That  Jesus  of  Nazareth  should  be  elevated  into  Jesus  of  Jeru- 
salem ;  that  the  divine  appeal  of  which  he  was   the  organ 
should  shift  its  scene  from  provincial  villages  to  the  holy  city, 
and  test  the  nation  at  its  responsible  centre ;  that  the  incar- 
nate Logos  should  be  supposed  to  present  himself,  not  so  much 
to  private  peasants,  as  to  the  hierarchy,  and  at  the  sanctuary 
which  claimed  a  sort  of  property  in  the  true  God, — this  is  an  in- 
telligil)le  turn  which  the  history  might  receive,  as  the  theory  of 
the  founder's  person  became  strained  to  higher  intensity.   But, 
if  he  had  really  devoted  his  chief  efforts  to  the  capital  ;  if  he  had 
seized  on  festival  after  festival  for  the  most  pul)lic  proclama- 
tion of  his  divine  nature  and  his  authoritative  claims  ;  if  he  had 
habitually  encountered  there  those  strangely  coupled  foes  of 
his,  the  "  high  priests  and  Pharisees,"  and  year  after  year 
been  the  object  there  of  wonder,  admiration,  and  conspiracy, 
— it  is  impossible  that  history  should  forget  or  supj^ress  all 
this,  and  tell  us  instead  that  all  his  brilliant  day  was  spent  in 
Galilee,  and  only  in  the  evening  did  he  come  to  Jerusalem  to 
die. 

These  several  features  do  not  encourage  us  to  look  for  the 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTAATS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  217 

fourth  evangelist  anywhere  within  the  circle  of  the  twelve  :  and 
against  his  identitication  with  John  in  particular  special  ob- 
jections force  themselves  upon  us  from  his  recorded  character. 
The  few  traits  of  him  which  are  historically  attested  would 
never  help  us  towards  the  Christian  ideal  of  the  "  beloved 
disciple."  The  younger  son  of  Zebedee,  he  is  counted  indeed, 
with  his  brother  James,  as  an  apostle  from  the  first ;  *  and 
these  two,  with  Peter,  appear  as  selected  associates  of  Jesus  in 
some  of  the  private  moments  of  his  life,  e.g.,  when  called  to 
raise  the  daughter  of  the  synagogue  ruler, t  and  on  the  Mount 
of  Transfiguration  :  t  and  their  mother,  presuming  on  this 
more  intimate  relation,  tried  to  Ijespeak  on  their  behalf  the 
chief  seats  in  Messiah's  kingdom. §  This  daring  request,  to 
which  the  answer  of  Jesus  shows  that  they  were  parties,  was 
not  out  of  keeping  with  the  stormy,  self-asserting  nature 
which  made  Jesus  call  them  "sons  of  thunder;";,  which 
impelled  them  to  invoke  fire  from  heaven  on  an  inhospitable 
village  of  Samaria  ;*y  and  led  John  to  put  an  interdict  on  a 
seeming  disciple,  because  he  did  not  join  their  company.** 
After  the  departure  of  Jesus,  John,  still  the  companion  of 
Peter, ft  selected  Jerusalem  for  his  field  of  labour,  quitting  it 
only  on  a  short  excursion  to  Samaria  ;n  and,  as  late  as  the 
year  a.d.  50,  he  is  found  by  Paul  to  be  one  of  the  "  seeming 
pillars"  of  the  disciples' church  there, §§  though  by  outside 
observers  he  is  regarded  as  an  "  unlearned  and  obscure  "  man. 
Slight  as  these  hints  are,  they  present  to  us  the  picture  of  a 
man  fiery  in  temperament,  not  ashamed  of  intolerant  anger  and 
even  exclusive  ambition,  entirely  preoccupied  with  Messianic 
expectations,  and  a  trusted  representative  of  the  Judaic  section 
of  the  Christian  Church. 

C  Relation  to  the  Apocahipsc. 

If  these  traits  of  character  and  this  cast  of  imagination  are 
reversed  in  the  Evangelist  they  are  exaggerated  in  the  Seer 
of  the  Apocalypse.     And  if,  in  conformity  with  tradition,  we 

*  Matt.  iv.  21  ;  x.  2.     Mark  i.  19  ;  iii.  17.     Luke  vi.  11.  f  Mark  v.  37. 

t  INIatt.  xvii.  1 ;  Mark  ix.  2 ;  Luke  ix.  28.  §  Matt.  xx.  20. 

II  Mark  iii.  17.  t  Luke  ix.  54.  "  Mark  ix.  38. 

tt  Acts  iii.  1 ;  iv.  13,  19.  Jt  Acts  viii.  14.  §§  Gal.  ii.  9. 


2i8  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Bookir. 

might  resort  to  that  work  in  order  to  complete  our  picture  of 
the  Apostle,  the  lineaments,  as  they  sketched  themselves  in, 
might  more  strongl}-  dej&ne  the  John  of  the  synoptics,  hut 
would  utterly  efface  the  image  of  the  fourth  evangelist.  Never 
will  the  same  mind  and  hand  produce  two  such  books,  till 
"  all  things  are  possible  "  to  men  as  well  as  "  to  God." 

If  this  were  all,  we  should  only  be  driven  to  make  a  choice, 
and,  probably  at  the  cost  of  the  gospel,  save  the  Eevelations 
for  the  Apostle.  Yet  this  we  cannot  do,  consistently  with  the 
story  of  his  exile  in  the  Domitian  persecution,  a.d.  95,  and 
his  return  to  Ephesus  under  Nerva's  mild  reign,  commencing 
the  next  year.  The  Apocalyptic  visions  thus  fall  in  the  tenth 
decade  of  the  first  century.  Yet  from  some  of  them  we  learn, 
in  express  terms,  that  they  were  written  fourteen  or  fifteen 
years  earlier,  prior  to  Domitian's  accession  to  the  purple.  In 
ch.  xiii.,  the  composite  beast,  made  up  of  leopard,  lion,  bear, 
with  seven  heads  and  ten  diademed  horns,  represents  imperial 
Eome ;  the  seven  heads  doubly  symbolizing,  as  explained  in 
xvii.  9,  her  seven  hills  and  first  seven  emperors ;  in  the  latter 
sense,  being  regarded  as  successive,  so  that  each  in  turn  is 
identified  with  the  whole  organism  and  called  "  the  beast." 
Of  these  seven  heads  it  is  said,*  "  The  five  are  fallen  ;  the 
one  is  ;  the  other  is  not  yet  come  ;  and  when  he  cometh,  he 
must  continue  a  little  while.  And  the  beast  (i.e.,  the  head) 
that  was,  and  is  not,  is  himself  also  an  eighth,  and  is  of  the 
seven  ;  and  he  goeth  into  perdition."  It  is  of  the  fijtli  that 
these  enigmatical  things  are  spoken  ;  somewhat  less  darkly 
hinted  in  the  corresponding  words,  "  I  saw  one  of  the  heads 
as  though  it  had  been  smitten  unto  death :  and  his  death- 
stroke  was  healed. "t  The  fifth  Roman  Emperor  was  Nero, 
aljhorred  by  Jews  and  Christians.  Deposed  in  June,  a.d. 
08,  and  flying  from  his  pursuers,  he  died  by  his  own 
hand,  and  that  of  his  freed  man  Epaphroditus :  but 
though  his  funeral  was  public,  a  strange  belief  got  hold 
of  the  popular  imagination  that  he  had  not  really  died,t 
but  had  found  refuge  among  the  Parthians  bej'ond  the 
Euphrates,    and   would   reappear  to   take   vengeance  on  his 

*  xvii.  10,  11.  t  xiii.  3. 

±  Tac.  Hist.  ii.  8.     Dio.  Cass.  C3,  64.     Sueton.  Nero,  57. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  219 

Western  enemies  and  the  city  of  the  seven  hills.  There  were 
not  wanting  pretenders  to  take  advantage  of  this  belief  ;  one 
of  whom  found  followers  enough  to  raise  a  formidable 
Parthian  war,  after  the  rumour  had  run  through  ten  futile 
years.  The  x\pocalypse  is  not  the  only  l)ook  on  which  it  has 
left  its  trace.  In  the  Ascension  of  Isaiah  (a  Christian  produc- 
tion of  probabh^  the  second  century)  occurs  a  prediction  that 
Belial  will  appear  in  the  form  of  a  godless  matricide  of  a 
king,  who  will  rule  for  three  years,  seven  months,  and  twenty- 
seven  days  (Daniel's  1335  days,  and  the  forty-two  months  of 
Revelation  xiii.  5),  and  then  1)e  thrown  into  Gehenna  by  God 
and  his  angels.*  And  in  the  Sibylline  Oraclesf  Nero  is 
described  thus  :  "  Then  will  a  mighty  king  fly  unexpectedly  out 
of  Italy,  unheard  of,  like  a  meteor,  beyond  the  Euphrates, 
after  peri)etrating  the  atrocious  guilt  of  matricide,  and  with 
wicked  hands  committing  many  other  crimes."  And  then  a 
few  lines  further  on, I  he  thus  reappears:  "But  the  conflict 
of  raging  war  will  then  come  to  the  West ;  and  the  fugitive 
from  Eome  will  also  come  thither  with  lifted  spear  across  the 
Euphrates  with  many  myriads  of  allies." 

To  complete  the  identification  of  the  wounded  head  with 
Nero,  the  author  goes  as  near  as  he  can  to  spelling  his  name  ; 
taking  its  component  letters,  only  not  in  their  i)h()netic  but 
in  their  numerical  function,  and,  while  hiding  their  series, 
reporting  their  sum,  "  the  number  of  the  man  "  as  666.  For 
a  reason  which  will  presently  appear,  he  works  out  the  total 
from  the  Hehrctr  spelling ;  the  successive  letters  of  which 
(answering  to  Ceesar-Ncro)  stand  for  the  numbers  100  +  (30  + 
200  +  50  +  200  +  0  +  50  =  666. 

This  fifth  head,  then,  of  heathendom,  was  to  have  his 
"second  coming,"  like  the  crucified  and  risen  king  of  saints  ; 
and,  at  that  coming,  was  to  consummate  his  blasphemies  and 
play  the  part  and  suffer  the  doom  of  Antichrist.  He  would 
belong  to  the  crisis  of  "  Last  Kings,"  and  when  liis  term  was 
over,  would  leave  no  successor.  There  were  but  seven  heads, 
and  when  the  seventh  had  fallen,  Eome  would  ])c  no 
more. 

*  xii.  2.  t  B.  TV.  119.  \\Titten  probablj-  a.d.  79-80. 

t  Sib.  Or.  IV.  137. 


220  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  n. 

A  Western  writer  possessed  by  this  prophetic  vision  might 
find  his  reckoning  at  a  loss  during  the  confused  eighteen 
months  which  followed  Nero's  fall.  For  seven  of  them  only, 
Galba  exercised  a  precarious  authority  ;  and  for  the  rest  Otho 
and  Vitellius  received  but  partial  allegiance,  so  that  the  whole 
term  is  described  by  Suetonius  as  a  rehellio  trium  principum, 
and  they  were  never  counted  as  emperors  in  the  East.  To  a 
writer,  therefore,  in  Asia  Minor  Vespasian  would  be  the  sixth, 
and  when  he  says  "  five  have  fallen,  one  is,"  it  is  within  his 
reign  that  he  declares  himself  to  stand,  i.e.,  between  a.d.  69 
and  79.  He  is  on  the  look-out  for  "  the  other,"  that  "  is  not 
yet  come,  and  when  he  cometh,  must  continue  a  little  while." 
But  that  "other"  will  be  the  seventh  and  last;  and  is  not 
that  place  reserved  for  the  returning  Nero  ?  and  has  not  the 
"  little  while  "  of  his  continuance  been  defined  as  forty-two 
months,  or  three  and  a  half  years  ?*  So  apparently  has  the 
prophecy  hitherto  run :  invented  and  delivered  under  the 
Prince  who  succeeded  the  fallen  fifth,  it  had  to  take  account 
of  a  sixth  :  but  on  no  seventh  would  it  venture  other  than 
the  returning  blasphemer,  who  was  to  close  the  series  and 
hasten  the  world's  catastrophe.  A  Seer,  possessed  by  the 
current  belief  and  writing  under  the  sixth  "  head,"  would  have 
nothing  in  view  beyond  but  the  conflicts  which  ushered  in 
"  the  end  of  all  things."  Yet,  to  our  surprise,  the  next  words 
to  the  passage  just  quoted  introduce  us  to  "  an  eighth  "  :  "  The 
beast  (i.e.,  the  head)  that  was  and  is  not  is  himself  also  an 
eighth,  and  is  of  the  seven.  And  he  goeth  into  perdition. "f 
A  writer  under  Vespasian  who  could  say  this  must  have 
reckoned  on  Titus  ("  the  other  not  yet  come  ")  succeeding  his 
father,  and  "  continuing  but  a  little  while  "  (a.d.  79-81).  If 
we  think  this  more  than  we  learn  from  Daniel,  and  take  it 
rather  as  a  vaticinium  post  evcntnm,  may  we  not  say  that  it 
looks  like  a  correction  of  a  disappointed  prophecy,  intended 
to  make  room  for  its  proving  right  after  all "?  There  was 
always  an  ambiguity  in  the  reckoning  of  the  seven  heads,  caused 
by  the  double  apparition  of  Nero  among  them.  Were  we  to 
count  pej'soyis  '?  or,  to  count  reigns  ?  seven  persons,  with  one 
taken  twice  over,  would  give  eight  reigns.     Of  this  ambiguity 

*  xiii.  5.  t  xvii.  11. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTAA'TS   AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  221 

advantage  is  taken  I)}'  the  interpolating  writer  of  xvii.  11,  to 
explain  away  the  non-appearance  of  Nero  at  the  date  when 
lie  was  due,  viz.,  at  the  fall  of  the  sixth  head,  Vespasian. 
The  seventh  place  was  filled,  not  hy  the  convulsions  of  the 
advancing  Antichrist,  1)ut  l\v  the  tranquil  two  years  of  Titus, 
the  ddiruc  Iniimini  noier'n^ ;  had  not  then  the  prophecy 
failed  '?  Not  so,  was  the  reply  :  this  is  hut  the  seventh  re///// 
that  is  now  consummated,  "  continuing  for  a  little  while," 
exactly  as  was  said  ;  and  it  is  of  seven  chiefs  that  the  prophecy 
speaks,  and  iltcir  story  is  not  yei  told  to  the  end  :  for  one  of 
them  who  has  vanished  midway  has  yet  "  to  ])e  revealed  in 
the  last  time,"  and  he  will  supply  an  eighth  chapter  to  the 
history,  though  himself  the  fifth  of  their  number.  The 
author  of  this  verse,  by  his  recognition  of  Titus'  reign, 
betrays  his  date,  as  not  that  of  Vespasian's  writer.  If 
assigned  to  a.d.  81,  prior  to  the  accession  of  Domitian,  he 
would  probably  be  looking  for  the  literal  fulfilment  of  the 
Neronic  prediction.  If  to  a  later  time,  when  the  detested 
brother  of  Titus  had  revealed  his  character,  he  mav  con- 
ceivably  have  Ijeen  content  with  a  figurative  interpretation, 
and,  regarding  Domitian  as  an  alter  Xero,  have  identified  their 
personalities,  for  the  purposes  of  the  prophecy,  as  indistin- 
guishable incarnations  of  Belial.  But  this  interpretation, 
though  favoured  by  Weizsiicker,*  seems  hardly  to  satisfy  the 
condition  that  "the  eighth  is  to  be  one  of  the  seven."  Ee- 
semblance  to  another  is  not  self-identity. 

The  dates  which  the  text  itself  thus  supplies  for  its  own 
composition  lie  between  a.d.  69  and  79,  with  a  supplementary 
comment  extending  to  a  couple  of  years  further.  If,  instead 
of  stepping  on  to  Vespasian,  we  accept  Galba  as  the  sixth 
"  head,"  the  only  difi'erence  will  be  that  the  former  date 
must  be  thrown  back  and  compressed  within  the  concluding 
half  of  A.D.  08.  Yet,  according  to  the  Patmos  and  Johannine 
tradition,  the  visions  themselves  were  not  experienced  till 
about  A.D.  95. 

Nor  are  there  wanting  other  traces  of  a  no  less  early 
chronology.     At  the  opening  of  the  eleventh  chapter  the  Seer 

*  Das  apostoH.schc  Zeitalter  d.  christ.  Kirche.  v.  Karl  Weizsackcr.     S.  518, 
519. 


i22  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  H; 

in  his  vision  is  sent  with  a  surveyor's  rod  to  the  beleaguered 
Holy  City,  with  commission  to  measure  the  Temple  and  the 
Altar  and  the  Worshippers  assembling  there,  but  not  the 
outer  court ;  for  that  is  given  up,  along  with  the  city,  to  be 
trodden  down  by  the  Gentiles  for  forty-two  months.  The 
purpose  of  this  ideal  survey  evidently  is  to  mark  off  the 
sacred  area  which,  under  Divine  protection,  is  to  remain 
inviolate,  from  the  environment  already  abandoned  to  desola- 
tion. The  passage  transports  us  to  the  penultimate  stage  of 
Jerusalem's  defence  against  Titus,  before  the  zealots  had 
driven  matters  to  the  last  despair,  or  the  thought  had  become 
possible  that  the  Temple  was  to  fall.  In  the  autumn  of  a.d. 
70,  however,  it  had  fallen ;  and  the  prophet  who  could  give 
it  assurance  against  such  fate,  and  even  promise  the  cleansing 
of  its  outer  court  in  three  and  a  half  years,  must  have  written 
his  word  several  months  before.* 

If  here  the  record  of  the  Seer's  visions  proves  its  existence 
twenty  years  before  the  alleged  date  of  their  occurrence, 
elsewhere  it  betrays  its  origin  just  as  long  after  he  had  left 
the  world.  The  signs  of  such  later  date  are  not  indeed  as 
simple  and  exact  as  the  marks  of  time  furnished  Ijy  the 
succession  of  the  Caesars.  Being  read  off,  not  from  the 
biography  of  persons  or  the  chronology  of  events,  but  from 
gradual  changes  in  the  usages  of  language,  the  development 
of  doctrine,  and  the  constitution  of  societies,  they  speak  with 
their  full  force  only  to  those  who  are  familiar  all  through  with 
the  special  lines  of  growth  on  which  they  stand.  In  appro- 
priating their  meaning,  others  must  needs  take  something  on 
trust.  AVlien  a  reader  conversant  with  the  earl}-  Christian 
literature  comes  upon  the  words,  "  I  was  in  the  Spirit  on  the 
LoirVs  Day,"  his  attention  will  be  arrested  at  once  by  the 
phrase  Iv  ry  kvquik)j  /(jUc'po,  an  ecclesiastical  name  for  Sunday 
which,  like  the  term  ku^oXikt]  tick-Arjo-m,  occurs  for  the  first 
time  in  the  Ignatian  Epistles  ;t  and  carries  us  into  the 
middle  of  the  second  century.  Elsewhere  in  the  N.  T.  the 
day  is  known  as  "the  first  day  of  the  week";  I  in  the  Epistle  of 

*  See  this  interpretation  extended  to  other  parts  of  the  same  chapter  in 
Die  Entstehung  der  Apokalj'pse,  v.  Dr.  Daniel  Voelter,  2t«  Aufl.  pp.  58,  59.- 
+  Magues.  ix.  +  Acts  xx.  7.     1  Cor.  xvi.  2. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.         223 

Barnabas,*  and  the  writings  of  Justin  Martyr,  as  "the  cifjldlt 
day,"  or,  as  "  the  so-called  day  of  the  Sun."t  That,  when 
once  introduced,  it  passed  into  rapid  currency  is  evident  from 
the  disappearance  in  it  of  the  ^Yord  iinioa,  and  the  retention 
of  K:u(;mKrj  alone  as  a  noun,  as  in  the  "  Teaching  of  the 
Twelve  Apostles,"  and  later  writings  of  the  second  century. 

Nor  can  the  attentive  reader  fail  to  notice  an  extension  of 
the  familiar  predicates  of  Messiah  introduced  with  an  air  of 
mystery  betokening  something  both  unexpected  and  signifi- 
cant. The  secret  is  but  hinted  at  in  the  message  to  the 
church  at  Pergamum.t  "  To  him  that  overcometh  will  I  give 
of  the  hidden  manna,  and  I  will  give  him  a  white  stone,  and 
upon  the  stone  a  new  name  written  which  no  one  knoweth  but 
he  that  receiveth  it."  For  the  symbol  of  this  esoteric  wisdom 
we  have  to  wait  till  "  the  Faithful  and  True,"  who  sends  the 
message,  appears  on  "a  white  horse,"  followed  by  "the 
armies  which  are  in  heaven,  upon  white  horses,  and  clothed 
in  fine  Imen,  white  and  pure."  "  He  hath  a  name  written 
which  no  one  knoweth  but  he  himself."  Yet  the  Seer  is  an 
exception;  for  he  adds,  "His  name  is  called  the  Word  of 
GoD."§  The  writer  of  these  passages  obviously  stands  at  the 
initial  stage  of  an  expanding  Christology,  nutritive  perhaps 
as  "  bread  from  heaven,"  but  not  yet  palatable  except  to  a 
few  who  had  felt  its  power  to  stay  their  spiritual  hunger. 
That  Christ  is  here  called  "  the  Word  of  God,"  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  Logos  doctrine,  I  do  not  afdrm.  The  phases  of 
that  doctrine,  in  the  Book  of  Wisdom,  in  Philo,  and  in  the 
Hellenized  Christianity  of  the  Alexandrine  school,  are  various 
and  progressive.  But  the  appropriation  of  its  characteristic 
predicate  to  the  Christ  of  the  Apocalypse  certainly  assigns 
the  writer  to  the  post-apostolic  period  in  which  the  conceptionc 
of  the  school  first  gained  a  hold  in  Asia  Minor. 

Nor  can  we  find  the  lieresies  which  are  denounced,  any 
more  than  the  Christology  which  is  implied,  at  an  earlier 
date  than  the  fourth  decade  of  the  second  century.  The  letters 
to  the  seven  churches  contain  warnings  against  several  varie- 
ties of  pernicious  error.     However  ditScult  it  may  be  to  fit 

*  XV.  adjin.  +  Apol.  07,  Tr}-ph.  24,  41. 

:r.  ii.  17.  §  xix.  11-13. 


224  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  1 1. 

each  descriptive  term — "  Nicolaitans,"  "  the  teaching  of 
Balaam",  "the  -woman  Jezebel  who  calleth  herself  a 
prophetess",  "the  synagogue  of  Satan",  to  precisely  its 
intended  personage  or  type  the  characteristics  condemned, 
the  lapse  from  self-denying  faith,  the  ungodly  carelessness, 
the  concessions  to  heathen  dissoluteness  (even  to  "  the  ex- 
ploring of  the  depths  of  Satan  "),  the  inward  alienation  from 
the  spirit  of  Him  that  is  Holy  and  True, — all  point  to  the 
gnosticism  of  Carpocrates  and  Basilides,  with  its  orgiastic 
variations  in  the  usages  of  Phrygia.  The  Pauline  antithesis 
of  Law  and  Gospel  pressed  to  its  extreme  and  unintended 
consequences,  assumed  with  them  the  form  of  absolute  anti- 
nomianism,  treating  all  moral  distinctions  as  illusory,  and 
resolving  the  ideal  life  into  unrestricted  freedom.  Christianity, 
instead  of  being  the  development  and  fulfilment  of  the  Jewish 
religion,  involved  a  total  breach  with  its  fundamental  principle 
of  Fiiglitcousjiess.  The  Old  Testament  system  was  the  Pievela- 
tion  of  a  lower  or  demiurgic  nature ;  while  the  Christian 
worship  is  directed  to  the  Highest  God,  who  is  above  the 
distinction  of  good  and  evil,  and  is  best  served  by  those  to 
whom  "  all  things  are  pure."  Marcion,  like  Paul,  saved  his 
protest  against  legalism  from  giving  any  excuse  for  licence. 
But  in  the  schools  most  prevalent  in  Asia  Minor,  about  a.d. 
130-140,  the  antinomian  theory  of  indifference  undoubtedly 
led  to  the  practical  libertinisin  which  is  so  vividly  painted  in 
the  letters  to  the  churches. 

Combining  these  several  marks  of  time,  we  find  in  the 
Apocalypse  passages  which  cannot  have  been  later  than  the 
seventh  decade  of  the  first  century,  and  others  that  cannot 
have  been  earlier  than  the  fourth  decade  of  the  second  century. 
The  irresistible  inference,  viz.,  that  the  book  is  a  composite 
product,  made  up  of  contributions  from  several  hands,  moulded 
by  a  final  editor,  was  announced  in  1882,  and  supported  with 
remarkable  critical  skill,  by  Dr.  Daniel  Yoelter,  a  Privat- 
docent  in  Tiibingen,  in  a  Treatise*  which,  though  destined  to 
be  superseded,  will  always  mark  an  epoch  in  the  true  inter- 
pretation of  the  Apocalypse.  On  one  point  only  Voelter 
adheres  to  the  older  criticism  :  all  the  components  of  the  book 

*  Die  Entstehung  der  Apokalypse  :  2t<^  Aufl.  1885. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  225 

are  "  Jeivish-Christian  "  ;  and  it  is  just  here  that  his  position 
is  already  shaken,  and  that  hy  the  independent  lahours  of  a 
stiU  younger  theologian.  This  ulterior  movement  cannot  be 
better  described  than  by  the  distinguished  Professor,  Adolf 
Harnack,  its  hrst  witness  and  generous  reporter.  In  com- 
mending to  the  reader  the  Essay  by  his  pupil,  Eberhard 
Vischer,  of  which  the  title  is  given  below,*  he  says  : — 

"  In  June  last  year,  the  author  of  the  foregoing  treatise,  then 
a  student  in  Theology  at  our  University,  came  and  told  me 
that  in  working  at  the  theme  prescribed  for  his  department, 
'  On  the  theological  point  of  view  of  the  Apocalypse  of  John,' 
he  had  found  no  way  through  the  problem  but  by  explaining 
the  book  as  a  Jewish  Apocalypse  with  Christian  interpolations, 
set  in  a  Christian  frame.  At  first  he  met  with  no  very  gracious 
reception  from  me.  I  had  at  hand  a  carefully  prepared  Lecture 
Heft,  the  result  of  repeated  study  of  the  enigmatic  book, 
registering  the  opinions  of  a  host  of  interpreters  from  Irenseus 
downwards :  but  no  such  hypothesis  was  to  be  found  among 
them  :  and  now  it  came  upon  me  from  a  very  young  student, 
who  as  yet  had  made  himself  master  of  no  commentary,  but 
had  only  carefully  read  the  book  itself.  Hence  my  scepticism 
was  intelligil)le :  but  the  very  first  arguments,  advanced  with 
all  modesty,  were  enough  to  startle  me ;  and  I  begged  my 
young  friend  to  come  l)ac4  in  a  few  days  and  go  more 
thoroughly  with  me  into  his  hypothesis.  I  began  to  read 
the  Apocalypse  with  care  from  the  newly-gained  point  of  view  ; 
and  it  was — I  can  say  no  less — as  if  scales  fell  from  my  ej'es. 
After  the  too  familiar  labours  of  interpreters  on  the  riddle  of 
the  book,  the  proffered  solution  came  upon  me  as  the  egg  of 
Columbus.  One  difficulty  after  another  vanished,  the  further 
I  read ;  the  darkest  passages  caught  a  sudden  light ;  all  the 
hypotheses  of  perplexed  interpreters — of  '  proleptic  visions,' 
'  historical  perspectives,'  '  recapitulating  method,'  *  resting 
stations,'  '  recreative  points,'  '  unconscious  relapse  into 
purely  Jewish  ideas,'  melted  away  at  once ;  the  complex 
Christology  of  the  book,  hitherto  a  veritable  crux  for  every 
historical  critic,  resolved  itself  into  simple  elements,  and  the 

•  Die   Offenbai-ung   Johannis   eiue    Jiidische    AjsokalNiDsc   in   Christicher 
Bearbeituug;  mit  cinem  Nachwort  von  A.  Harnack.     ISSG. 

Q 


2C6  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  1 1. 

sections,  XL  XII.,  by  far  the  most  difficult  of  all,  at  once 
became  plain  and  intelligible.  But,  above  all,  the  severance 
of  a  Jewish  original  text  from  a  Christian  redaction  resolved 
the  main  problem  of  the  Apocalypse  of  John,  viz.,  the  pecu- 
liarity of  the  author's  Christianity.  What  pains  have  been 
spent  upon  this  question  for  the  last  ten  years  !  What  argu- 
ments of  high  repute  lent  support  to  those  who  held  the  book 
to  be  strictly  Jewish-Christian,  and  therefore  anti-Pauline, 
and  yet  how  easily  were  they  refuted  by  other  proofs  drawn 
from  the  book  itself !  How  plainly  might  the  author's  Chris- 
tian universalism  be  proved  ;  and  what  insuperable  considera- 
tions presented  themselves  against  it !  Yischer's  hypothesis 
removed  these  difficulties  at  a  stroke.  There  can  be  no  further 
question  of  a  Jewish  Christianity.  We  have  before  us,  as  the 
basis  of  the  work,  a  purely  Jewish  document,  clearly  traceable 
in  its  outlines  and  the  mass  of  its  details,  supplemented  and 
revised  by  a  Christian,  who  has  nothmg  whatever  to  do  with 
the  'lapoj/'X  Kara  (TcipKu,  but  thinks  only  of  the  Gentile  world, 
out  of  which  the  Lamb  has  purchased  with  his  blood  a  count- 
less multitude."* 

In  this  generous  tribute  to  his  pupil,  Harnack  does  not,  in 
my  judgment,  overestimate  the  convincing  effect  of  his  analysis. 

After  indicating  the  lines  of  cleavage  between  the  original 
text  and  the  recension  throughout  the  book,  and  accounting 
for  each  interpolation,  Vischer  exhibits  the  results  in  a  reprint 
of  the  entire  Jewish  part,  extending  from  iv.  1  to  xxii.  5, 
with  the  Christian  insertions  rendered  conspicuous  by  different 
type  :  followed  by  an  Appendix,  containing  the  first  three 
chapters  and  the  Epilogue  xxii.  6-21,  which  form  the 
Christian  framework  of  the  whole.  The  effect  of  this  recast 
of  the  composition  is  most  striking.  For  a  reader  who  is  at 
all  conversant  with  the  Jewish  apocalyptic  literature  the  im- 
pression can  scarcely  fail  to  be  irresistible,  that  the  prophetic 
oracle  which  has  darkened  so  much  has  at  last  revealed  its 
own  origin. 

It  does  not  follow,  from  the  mixture  of  the  two  elements, 
that  the  work  is  due  to  only  two  contributors,  and  referable 
only  to  two  times.     From  the  second  century  e.g.  the  Jewish 

*  Vischer's  Offenb.  Job.  Nacbwort,  S.  126,  127. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  227 

eschatology  was  ever  producing  fresh  varieties  of  vision  ;  and 
the  play  of  Christian  fancy  upon  them  fitted  them  with  new 
meanings  for  new  times.  Reasons  which  it  would  need  a 
complete  commentary  to  set  forth  warrant  the  conclusion  that 
the  Judaic  groundwork  owes  part  of  its  text  to  the  zealot 
period  of  the  first  Jewish  war,  a.d.,  G6-70,  and  part  to  a  time 
about  eight  years  later  ;  and  that  the  Christianized  recension 
shows  the  hand  of  two  editors,  one,  in  Domitian's  time,  re- 
sponsible for  all  the  twenty-nine  passages  speaking  of  "  'Die 
Lamh,'"  the  other,  belonging  to  Hadrian's  reign,  answerable 
for  the  letters  to  the  churches,  as  well  as  for  the  introduction 
and  conclusion  of  the  whole  work.  It  cannot  therefore  have 
been  issued  before  a.d.  136,  and  is  altogether  post-apostolic. 
How  strange  that  we  should  ever  have  thought  it  possible  for 
a  personal  attendant  on  the  ministry  of  Jesus  to  write  or  edit 
a  book  mixing  up  fierce  Messianic  conflicts,  in  which,  with  the 
sword,  the  gory  garment,  the  blasting  flame,  the  rod  of  iron, 
as  his  emblems,  he  leads  the  war-march,  and  treads  the  wine- 
press of  the  wrath  of  God  till  the  deluge  of  blood  rises  to  the 
horses'  bits,  with  the  speculative  Christology  of  the  second 
century,  without  a  memory  of  his  life,  a  feature  of  his  look,  a 
word  from  his  voice,  or  a  glance  back  at  the  hillsides  of  Galilee, 
the  courts  of  Jerusalem,  the  road  to  Bethany,  on  which  his 
image  must  be  for  ever  seen  ! 

What  then  is  the  effect  of  the  new  discovery  (if  such  it  be) 
respecting  the  Apocalypse  on  the  question  of  authorship  for 
the  fourth  Gospel  ?  Simply  this  :  the  Apocalypse  is  put  out 
of  court  altogether  as  a  witness  in  the  case.  Stripped  of  its 
own  apostolic  pretension,  it  has  nothmg  to  say  either  for 
or  against  that  of  the  Gospel :  and  the  old  argument  against 
either  from  its  violent  contrast  with  the  other  can  no  longer 
Ije  pressed.  Deprived  of  this  source  of  comparison,  we  return 
to  the  purely  internal  features  of  the  Gospel,  so  far  as  they 
bear  on  the  probable  authorship. 

D.  lli'lation  to  tlie  Paschal  Controcersy. 

Among  the  peculiarities  of  the  fourth  Gospel  there  is  one 
which  seems  to  displace  the  author  lioth  from  the  list  of  Apostles, 

Q  2 


228  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  1 1. 

and  from  his  traditional  residence  and  authority  at  Ephesus. 
His  reports  of  events  in  the  Passion  week  is  inconsistent  with 
the  Synoptic  narrative,  whose  source  must  be  regarded  as 
apostohc.  And  his  interpretation  of  their  meaning  is  at 
variance  with  their  memorial  celebration  in  the  churches  of 
Asia  Minor.  It  will  be  simpler  to  take  the  latter  discrepancy^ 
first.  To  render  it  clear,  some  account  must  be  given  of  the 
controversy  about  Easter,  which  preceded  the  establishment 
of  the  present  church  calendar. 

There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  in  the  earlier  half  of  the 
second  century  the  Western  Christians  observed  anxj  annual 
festival  at  all.  Justin  Martj'r,  writing  in  Eome,  and  pro- 
fessing to  give  to  the  Emperor  a  complete  account  of  the 
Christian  usages,*  mentions  only  baptism,  the  eucharist,  the 
Sundav  assemblv  ;  and  is  silent  about  anv  Christmas,  Easter, 
or  Whitsuntide.  Their  commemorations  went  by  the  week, 
not  bv  the  vear ;  and  within  the  week,  Wednesdav  and 
Friday  (the  latter  especially)  were  kept  as  fast-days  (sta- 
tiones),-\  in  memory  of  the  sufferings  of  Christ ;  but,  above  all, 
Sunday,  as  the  festival  of  the  resurrection.  The  attitude  of 
the  early  Christians  was  altogether  prospective,  on  the  watch 
for  the  return  of  Christ  and  the  last  act  in  the  drama  of 
human  things  ;  and  the  tension  of  this  amazing  expectation 
was  inconsistent  with  the  commemorative  mood,  which  sees 
its  brightest  glories  in  retrospect,  and  repeats  them  as  beacon- 
lights  to  intersect  the  routine  of  future  years.  But  when  the 
world  had  sufficiently  vindicated  its  permanence,  and  it 
seemed  settled  that  Christ  was  to  remain  in  heaven,  and  his 
church  to  organize  itself  below,  disappointed  prophecy  with- 
drew, and  historical  veneration  came  to  the  front,  eager  to 
save  the  Christ  of  the  past,  in  proportion  as  the  form  dis- 
solved away  of  Christ  in  the  near  future ;  and  the  same 
portion  of  the  second  century  which  discredited  Chiliasm,  and 
threw  it  into  the  shade,  concentrated  interest  upon  the  earthly 
life  of  Christ,  and  created  the  anniversaries  which  celebrated 
its  main  epochs.  Especially  was  the  desire  felt  to  emphasize 
tJiat  one  of  the  weekly  resurrection  days  which  fell  nearest 

*  Apol.  i.  c.  65  seqq. 

t  HemifE  Pastor,  Simil.  v. ;  and  Tertull.  de  Jejun.  ii. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  229 

in  season  to  the  original  event ;  and  how  to  hit  upon  this  v.ith 
the  requisite  precision  became  a  question.  In  the  histoiy, 
that  week  was  picked  out  from  all  the  weeks  of  the  year,  by 
the  occurrence  of  the  passover ;  and  the  passover  was  a 
spring  festival,  determmed  in  date  by  the  equinoctial  full 
moon,  which  marked  the  mid  point  (or  fourteenth  day)  of  the 
first  Jewish  dunar)  month,  Nisan.  Here,  then,  without 
consulting  any  rabbi  or  submitting  to  his  law,  was  a  con- 
spicuous astronomical  event  which  detected  the  r'x(\]it  week  .- 
and  the  rule  emerged,  that  the  Sunday  next  after  that  par- 
ticular full  moon  should  be  Easter  Siotdajj.  This  was  the 
regulative  day :  from  this,  the  reckoning  was  taken  backward 
to  the  previous  Friday,  in  order  to  alight  upon  the  memorial  day 
of  the  crucifixion  ;  which  was  chiefly  kept  by  intensifying  the 
usual  weekly  fast,  prolonging  it  through  the  time  when  Christ 
was  in  the  sepulchre,  and  terminating  it  only  with  Easter 
morning  communion.  Thus  the  Western  usage  established 
an  anniversary  week,  rather  than  an  anni^-ersary  daij,  and, 
when  the  full  moon  came,  paid  no  attention  to  it,  but  waited 
for  the  following  Sunday  ;  refusing  to  disturb  the  incidence  of 
the  passion  and  the  resurrection  on  the  original  week-days 
which  witnessed  them,  although  if  they  had  been  brought 
on  at  the  passover  of  some  earlier  or  later  year,  they  would 
have  fallen  on  other  days  than  the  sixth  and  the  first. 

In  Lesser  Asia,  the  consuetudinary  rule  had  formed  itself 
in  a  different  wa3^  The  Christians  there  had  never,  from  the 
first,  been  without  an  annual  festival ;  nor  had  they  to  find 
for  themselves  the  right  date  on  which  to  hold  it ;  for  what 
they  meant  to  keep  was  just  the  passover  which,  according  to 
the  synoptists,  their  Master  had  kept  with  his  apostles ; 
and  that  must  be  found,  as  he  had  found  it,  by  the  Jewish 
rule,  and  always  fall  upon  the  14th  of  the  spring  lunar  month. 
As  the  moon  in  her  fulness  pays  no  regard  to  the  days  of  the 
week,  but  in  a  series  of  years  looks  down  on  every  one,  the 
paschal  observance  shifted  through  them  all.  and  had  no 
preference  for  one  above  the  rest.  Hence  it  might  happen 
that  in  Asia  Minor  the  commemorative  season  was  over  before 
it  had  begun  in  Italy  ;  and,  while  the  West  was  bending  in 
the  most  solemn  worship  of  the  year,  the  churches  across  the 


230  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

-^gean  had  resumed  their  routine  again.  Thus  there  was  no 
Good  Friday  among  these  Eastern  Christians,  no  Easter 
Smiday  ;  nor  was  the  primary  object  of  their  commemoration 
either  the  crucifixion  or  the  resurrection , — to  which  these  were 
respectively  dedicated, — but  the  Last  Supper,  which  was  their 
prehide,  and  stood  for  the  disciples  as  the  dividing  mark 
between  the  earthly  ministry  and  the  heavenly  retirement  of 
their  Master.  And  upon  this  feature  depends  another  differ- 
ence between  the  West  and  the  East.  That  paschal  supper, 
which  was  the  uppermost  thought  with  the  latter,  was  a  feast 
of  thankfulness  and  joy  ;  and,  as  soon  as  its  celebration  came, 
the  fast  which  preceded  it  was  ended,  and  the  regimen  of 
austerity  was  dismissed,  just  at  the  time  when  the  former, 
contemplating  only  the  dark  hours  of  the  cross  and  the 
sepulchre,  imposed  a  rigorous  self-denial,  and  filled  the  churches 
with  plaintive  prayer,  refusing  to  dissolve  the  fast  till  the 
resurrection  morning  broke.  Thus  the  Asiatics  simply  con- 
tinued the  Jewish  usage,  importing  into  it  Christian  memories 
and  ideas  ;  not  of  course  unmindful  of  the  Master's  death  and 
resurrection,  but  concentrating  the  remembrance  of  them  into 
one  commemoration  copied  from  the  night  of  forecast  and  of 
parting,  when  the  catastrophe  waited  only  for  the  morrow, 
and  its  reversal  for  the  next  sabbath's  close.  With  what 
observances  these  Christians  celebrated  their  paschal  days  ; 
whether  they  actually  imitated  the  Jewish  rite  and  partook 
together  of  the  lamb,  or  merely  administered  the  eucharist 
with  some  special  solemnities,  there  is  no  distinct  evidence  to 
show.  Certain  it  is  that  in  some  Eastern  Churches  the  former 
practice  prevailed  for  many  centuries  ;  but  a  usage  so  strongly 
at  variance  with  the  customs  of  the  West  could  hardly  have 
escaped  mention  and  protest  in  the  controversies  of  the  time, 
had  the  Romans  been  able  to  charge  it  upon  their  opponents. 
Probably,  therefore,  there  was  only  a  communion  service  of 
exceptional  sanctity. 

Divested  of  its  accessories,  the  question  in  dispute  fell  into 
this  form.  Are  we  to  celebrate  the  passover  which  Jesus  kept 
with  his  disciples  the  day  before  he  suffered,  or  his  sufferings 
which  followed?  And,  if  the  latter,  what  paschal  character 
has  our  celebration? 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCKIPTURES.  231 

Of  this  dispute  vestiges  remain  to  us  from  three  of  its 
stages ;  in  which  the  oj^posite  sides  were  represented,  first  by 
Poly  carp  of  Smyrna,  and  Anicetus,  Bishop  of  Rome  (about 
A.D.  100)  ;  next  by  Mehto  of  Sardes,  and  ApolHnaris  of 
Hierapolis  (about  a.d.  170)  :  and  lastly,  by  Polycrates  of 
Ephesus,  and  Victor,  Bishop  of  Piome  (about  a.d.  190).  Of 
these,  ApolHnaris  alone  gives  us  an}^  clear  insight  into  the 
pleas,  other  than  of  example  and  authority,  urged  on  either 
side.  Notwithstanding  his  geographical  position,  he  supported 
the  Western  usage,  adducing  on  its  behalf  a  consideration 
which,  repeated  as  it  is  by  Clement  of  Alexandria  and 
Hippolytus,  was  evidently  the  stock-argument  of  the  Pioman 
party.  It  takes  us  at  once  to  the  point  where  the  kernel  of 
the  problem  lies.  The  contention  of  his  opponents,  he  tells 
us,  is  that  "  on  the  14th  of  Nisan  the  Lord  ate  the  lamb  with 
his  disciples,  and  on  the  next  day,  the  great  day  of  unleavened 
bread,  himself  suffered,"  and  they  appealed  to  Matthew  in  proof. 
Against  this  he  advances  his  own  position,  that  "  the  genuine 
passover,  the  great  sacrifice,  is  the  Son  of  God  instead  of  the 
lamb,  the  bound  captive  who  binds  the  strong  one,  the  judge 
who  judges  quick  and  dead, — from  whose  pierced  side  flow  the 
two  purifiers,  water  and  l)lood,  and  who  was  entombed  on  the 
paschal  day.""*  Hippolytus  places  the  two  opinions  in  still 
stronger  antithesis.  The  Christian  of  Asia  Minor,  he  tells 
us,  puts  his  case  thus :  "  Christ  kept  the  passover,  and  then 
next  day  he  suffered  :  therefore  it  is  my  duty  to  do  as  the 
Lord  did."  To  which  Hippolytus  replies,  "  He  is  mistaken, 
being  unaware  that,  at  the  season  of  his  passion,  Christ  did 
not  eat  the  legal  passover,  being  himself  the  passover  of  pro- 
mise that  fulfilled  itself  on  the  prescribed  day."  Again,  "  He 
partook  indeed  of  a  nuppcr  before  the  passover;  l)ut  the 
passover  he  did  not  eat :  instead  of  this  be  suffered.  Not 
even  was  it  the  time  for  eating  it."t 

Nothing  can  l)e  clearer  tl;an  that  the  two  parties  here 
represented  were  at  issue  upon  a  question  of  historical  fact, — 
the   Quartodccimans   affirming,  the  "Westerns  denying,   that 

*  Chron.  Pascli.  p.  11.  Ed.  Bonn:  more  fully  cited  ap.  Hilgenfeld's  Pascha- 
Streit  del-  alteu  Kirchc,  p.  25G. 
t  Chron.  Pasch.  p.  12. 


232  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Jesus  kept  the  last  passover  with  his  disciples :  both  appealing 
to  the  "Gospel;"  the  former,  by  name,  to  Matthew;  the 
latter,  by  citation  and  allusion  (observe  the  pierced  side,  the 
blood  and  water,  the  entombment  on  the  paschal  day,  the 
supper  hejorc  the  passover,  the  time  for  eating  it  not  having 
come,  the  passion  on  the  paschal  day  and  as  the  fulfilment 
of  the  typical  rite),  to  the  fourth  evangelist;  thus  establish- 
ing, as  Apollinaris  himself  remarks,  a  variance  between  the 
Gospels.* 

That  variance  is  no  perverse  invention  of  either  party.  It 
plainly  exists,  and  survives  all  the  good  offices  of  indefatigable 
harmonists.  The  case  stands  thus.  The  Gospels  all  agree  in 
their  hebdomadal  chronology  of  the  passion  ;  that  Jesus  was 
crucified  on  the  Friday ;  that  he  held  a  last  supper  with  his 
disciples  on  the  Thursday ;  that  he  rose  from  the  dead  on  the 
following  Sunday  :  nor  have  any  critics  with  whom  we  are 
here  concerned  ever  doubted  their  unanimity  in  this  pro- 
gram. +  But  to  these  dates  the  synoptists  fit  the  numerical 
days  of  the  month  differently  from  the  fourth  evangelist ; 
letting  the  14th  (with  its  passover  in  the  evening),  which  he 
identifies  with  the  Friday,  fall  already  upon  the  Thursday. 
The  evidence  of  this  discrepancy  is  of  the  simplest  and  most 
conspicuous  kind  :  the  paschal  meal  is  declared  by  the  synop- 
tists to  be  the  Thursday's  supper,  and  to  be  over,  therefore, 
before  the  crucifixion ;  by  the  fourth  evangelist  to  be  due  on 
the  Friday  evening,  and  therefore  to  be  still  to  come  at  the 
hour  of  Christ's  passion.  "W^ien  the  day  came  (says  Luke) 
for  the  passover  to  be  killed,  Jesus  sent  Peter  and  John, 
saying,  "  Go  and  make  ready  for  us  the  passover,  that  we  may 
eat  it  "  :  these  disciples  having  carried  out  their  instructions, 
and  "made  ready  the  passover,"  he  placed  himself  at  table, 
when  the  hour  came,  with  the  twelve  apostles,  and  said,  "  I 
have  earnestly  desired  to  eat  this  passover  with  you  before  I 


*  aTaaid^fip  SoKel  kut  avTovs  ra  evayyeXia.  Clirou.  Pasc-h.  p.  14. 
t  Dr.  Sears  attributes  to  the  "Tubingen  critics"  the  opinion  that  the 
fourth  evangelist  "places  the  crucifixion  on  Thursday,"  and  the  supper  on 
Wednesday.  This  misapprehension  runs  through  his  whole  Appendix  on  the 
Easter  Controversy,  and  renders  its  reasoning  a  labour  in  vain.  "  The  fourth 
Gospel,"  &c.,  p.  537. 


Chap.  1 1.1      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  233 

suffer."*  This,  at  all  events,  is  iinambiguoas.  The  fourth 
evangelist,  on  the  other  hand,  in  citing  the  symbohc  proof  of 
love, — the  washing  the  disciples'  feet, — which  Jesus  gives  at 
the  last  supper,  places  it  still  before  the  feast  of  the  passover.f 
When  Jesus,  still  at  table,  addressed  a  few  words  to  Judas 
Iscariot,  after  giving  him  the  sop,  he  was  supposed,  by  some  of 
the  twelve,  to  be  ordering  the  purchase  "  <>/  things  needful  for 
the  feast.'' X  In  the  early  morning  following,  Jesus  being 
brought  up  for  examination  before  Pilate,  his  Jewish  accusers 
will  not  enter  the  prEetorium,  lest  they  should  disqualify  them- 
selves for  eating  the  impejiding  j^assorer.^  At  noon,  when  Jesus 
is  delivered  up  to  be  crucified,  the  day  is  again  defined  as  the 
^^preparation  day  for  the  passover."'  \\  Again,  in  the  afternoon, 
provision  is  made  for  removing  the  bodies  before  sunset, 
that  they  might  be  out  of  the  way  before  the  Sabbath  began  : 
for  "  that  sahhath  icas  a  great  day ;  "  why?  because  it  was  not 
only  an  ordmary  sabbath,  but  the  first  day  of  the  feast,  the 
paschal  day,  Avhich  had  a  special  sanctity.  And  why  does  the 
evangelist  hiy  solemn  emphasis  on  the  fact  that  the  crurifra- 
gium  was  not  applied  to  Jesus  ?  Because  in  him  is  thus 
literally  fulfilled  the  law  of  the  passover  that  "  not  a  bone 
shall  be  broken";  and  he  became  in  this,  as  in  the  hours  of 
his  doom  to  death  and  of  his  execution,  the  Lamb  of  God,  the 
fulfilment  of  all  passovers-IT  And  here  comes  out,  unmistak- 
ably, the  doctrinal  conception  which  underlies  the  writer's 
historical  variation  from  his  predecessors.  He  is  possessed  all 
through  with  the  idea  that  Jesus  was  the  true  paschal  lamb  : 
and  that  the  story  of  his  life  and  death  must  be  so  presented 
as,  by  its  mystical  conformity  with  the  paschal  ritual,  to 
declare  him  the  corresponding  antitype.  In  this  interest  it  is 
that  he  fixes  the  anointing  of  Jesus  by  the  woman  of  Bethany 

*  Luke  xxii.  7-14.     Compare  Matt.  xxvi.  17-20  ;  Mark  xiv.  12-17. 

t  In  spite  of  the  tangled  construction,  which  would  allow  irpo  r^r  iopTrjs 
to  be  attached  as  a  date  to  any  one  of  several  nearer  words,  the  meauiug  of 
the  whole  passage  evidently  requires  this  initial  phrase  to  be  held  on  till  the 
action  of  taking  the  towel  and  basin  is  reached  (xiii.  4,  5  ;  1-5). 

X  John  xiii.  29. 

§  John  xviii.  28. 

II    John  xix.  14.     The  attempt  to  make  out  that  TraparrKevf]  means  Friday 
and  TTacrxa  Easter  week,  is  a  mere  subterfuge. 

11  John  xix.  36. 


234  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

— ^her  dedication  of  him  "  against  the  day  of  his  entombment " 
— "  six  days  before  the  passover,"  *  i.e.,  on  the  10th  of  the 
month,  when  the  Jew  was  to  provide  himself  with  "  a  lamb 
without  blemish,"  to  be  reserved  for  the  paschal  day  :  and 
perhaps  also,  that  he  introduces  the  mention  of  "  the  tenth 
hour  "  in  connection  with  the  Baptist's  words  of  testimony, 
"  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  !  "  and  the  visit  of  the  two  disciples 
to  see  where  he  dwelt ;  t  for  that  was  the  time  when  the  lamb 
was  slain,  and  became  the  passover,  and  the  door-posts  of  the 
house  were  sprinkled  with  its  sacred  blood. 

A  minor  feature  in  this  discrepancy  between  the  narratives 
deserves  a  passing  remark.  The  fourth  evangelist  will  not 
allow  the  last  supper  to  have  been  the  passover,  which,  he 
tells  us,  was  not  due  till  next  day.  And  who  was  this  fourth 
evangelist  ?  That  very  John,  we  are  told,  who,  with  Peter, 
was  charged  by  his  Master  with  the  preparation  of  that  supper 
as  the  passover,  and  who  did  prepare  it  accordingly,  %  Those 
assiduities  of  the  apostle  in  the  guest-chamber  it  is  the  main 
business  of  the  evangelist  to  undo  and  remove  out  of  the  way  : 
how,  then,  can  these  two  be  the  same  person  ? 

We  find,  then,  exactly  the  same  variance  between  the  synop- 
tists  and  the  writer  of  the  fourth  Gospel  which  divided  the 
churches  of  Lesser  Asia  from  the  Western  Christians  in  the 
paschal  controversy.  And  how  did  they  share  the  evangelical 
authority  between  them  ?  The  Asiatics  had  Matthew  and  his 
companions  on  their  side  :  the  Europeans  were  in  accord  with 
both  the  facts  and  the  doctrine  of  the  last  evangelist ;  and  his 
Gospel,  though  not  at  first  put  forward  by  them  as  their 
authority,  is  an  unanswerable  manifesto  in  their  favour. 

Yet,  if  we  believe  the  Ireneean  tradition,  the  author  of  that 
Gospel  was  the  very  John  who  had  lived  and  died  among  the 
Ionian  Christians:  whose  tomb  was  at  Ephesus;  whose  name 
was  a  sacred  word  to  old  and  young ;  and  whose  mode  of  life, 

*  John  xii.  1-8.  As,  iu  the  account  of  the  resurrection,  Sunday  is  called 
the  "  third  day,"  or  "  three  days  "  after  Friday  (Matt,  xxvii.  63  ;  Mark  viii.  31) ; 
so,  inversely,  would  Friday  be  described  as  three  days  before  Sunday.  Simi- 
larly, three  days  before  the  15th  would  be  the  13th  ;  four  days,  the  12th ;  five 
days  the  11th ;  six  days  the  10th,  when  the  lamb  was  set  apart  for  its  sacred 
purpose. 

t  John  i.  37-39  ;  Ex.  xii.  3-7.  t  Luke  xxii.  8. 


Chap.  II. J      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  235 

out^\'ard  look,  and  casual  sayings  were  the  subject  of  reverential 
remembrance.  Nowhere  was  he  so  well  known;  and  the 
churches  of  that  region  declared  that  they  had  nothing  which 
they  did  not  owe  to  him.  And,  strange  to  say,  they  persistently 
affirmed,  at  ever}'  stage  of  this  controversy,  that  their  paschal 
usage  was  what  he  had  taught  them,  and  what  he  himself  had 
always  practised.  In  a  friendly  conference  at  Rome,  about 
.v.D.  160,  "  Anicetus  could  not  induce  Polycarp  to  forego  his 
observance,  to  which  he  had  alwaj'S  adhered  along  icith  John, 
the  Lord's  disciple,  and  the  other  apostles  with  whom  he  had 
associated ;  nor  could  Polycarp  persuade  Anicetus  to  the 
observance,  bound  as  he  declared  himself  to  be  by  the  usages 
of  his  predecessors."  *  In  reply  to  the  same  Victor's  attempt 
to  enforce  a  uniform  ol)servance  of  the  Western  practice,  Poly- 
crates  vigorously  defends  his  Ephesian  Church  and  its  neigh- 
bours, b}^  appeal  to  the  authority  of  their  martyrs  and  spiritual 
guides.  This  roll  of  honour  included  seven  bishops  (relations 
of  his  own),  Melito  of  Sardes,  Polycarp  of  Smyrna,  the  apostle 
Philip  in  Hierapolis,  and  his  daughters,  and  "  JoJin,  who  lajj 
on  the  Lord's  breast,  who  became  priest,  and  wore  the  Petalon  " : 
"  all  these  kept  the  paschal  fourteenth  da}',  according  to  the 
Gospel."  + 

Here,  then,  is  the  whole  authority  of  the  Apostle  John,  his 
personal  habit,  and  the  usage  which  formed  itself  under  his 
influence,  brought  to  bear  against  the  historical  statement 
and  doctrinal  conception  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  How  could 
this  be,  if  at  Smyrna,  at  Ephesus,  and  throughout  the  region 
where  his  name  was  a  power,  that  Gospel  had  been  current  as 
his  legacy,  and  its  representation  of  the  last  earthly  days  of 
Christ  had  l)een  received  as  accredited  by  him  '?  The  features 
of  his  life  and  thought  which  these  traditions  preserve  are 
precisely  what  this  Gospel  resists  and  banishes.  They  give 
us  the  seer,  and  not  the  evangelist :  he  is  the  Chiliast,  the 
Quartodeciman,  nay,  the  priest  who  wears  the  sacerdotal 
headgear, — all  of  them  characters  of  lingering  Judaism, 
detaining  him  still  among  the  sacred  Aoo'cn  and  totally  at 
variance  with  that  spiritual  humanism,  that  dislike  of  "  the 

*  Letter  of  Ireuceus  to  Victor,  ap.  Eus.  Hist.  Eccl.  V.  xxiv.  16. 
t  Letter  of  Polycratcs  to  Victor,  ap.  Eus.  Hist.  Eccl.  V.  xxiv.  2  7. 


236  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Jews"  and  leaning  to  "  the  Greeks,"  which  pervade  the  last 
Gospel. 

E.  MarU  of  Time. 

Not  only  is  the  evangelist  other  than  the  apostle, 
and  other  than  the  Ephesian  John  of  the  Apocalypse : 
he  plainly  belongs  to  another  age.  He  uses  a  dialect,  and 
speaks  in  tones,  to  which  the  first  century  was  strange,  and 
which  were  never  heard  till  a  generation  born  in  the  second 
was  in  mid-life.  True  it  is,  that  period  of  Christian  develop- 
ment is  shrouded  in  impenetrable  darkness,  and  can  be  inter- 
preted only  by  a  kind  of  historical  divination,  comparing  its 
resulting  faith  with  its  initial,  and  supplying  the  silent  and 
invisible  links  that  must  lie  between.  Were  an  unexpected 
sunshine  to  be  shed  upon  that  time  of  struggling  religions 
and  dissolving  philosophies,  one  of  the  most  curious  passages 
of  human  experience  would  doubtless  be  laid  open  to  us.  A 
craving  in  the  Jewish  mind  to  escape  the  limited  service  of 
a  national  and  historic  God,  and  find  room  for  some  sacred 
relations  within  the  wide  realm  of  men  and  nature  ;  a  craving 
in  the  heathen  mind  to  bring  the  too  spacious  divineness  of 
the  universe  nearer  home,  and  see  and  feel  it  in  contact  with 
human  life, — led  to  their  approximation  from  opposite 
directions,  till,  in  fields  of  thought  not  far  apart,  they 
alighted  on  some  mediating  conceptions  helpful  to  the  desire 
of  both,  expanding  the  religion  of  the  one,  concentrating  that 
of  the  other.  Among  a  host  of  these  abstractions, — (TO(j)ia, 
(piog,  aAij^ffo,  -y^cipic,  TriGTig  Z,'jjr\,  ^vvafxiq,  ^(jtwq,  TTopaicXrjroc, 
7rX)ipw/uo, — many  were  tried,  and  after  playing  a  brief  part, 
fell  into  silence,  and  disappeared  ;  but  there  were  two  which  so 
served  the  common  want  as  to  hold  their  ground,  and  give 
final  form  to  the  universality  of  the  Christian  faith.  The 
fi.rst  of  these — Trvev ina — came  from  the  Jewish  side,  and  was 
especially  the  vehicle  of  Paul's  ascent  from  the  level  of  his 
holy  land  till  his  horizon  embraced  the  "  circle  of  the  earth  ;  " 
and  whoever  has  accompanied  the  movement  of  his  thought 
knows  how  he  steers  and  commands  this  "  chariot  of  fire,"  to 
show  him  all  the  abodes  of  men  in  the  light  of  comprehensive 
mercy  beneath  him.     The   second,— X070C— came   from   the 


Chap.  II.  J      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  237 

heathen  side,  and  supphed  a  common  term  and  Hnk  of  union 
between  the  divine  and  the  human  nature ;  first  apphed  l)y 
Philo  to  all  the  media,  whether  in  the  cosmos,  in  history,  or 
in  the  individual  soul,  through  which  God  passes  from  being 
into  manifestation  ;  then  incarnated  by  the  Christians  in  the 
person  of  Jesus  during  the  aim  as  mimhilis  of  his  ministry  on 
earth.  In  this  form  it  did  not  come  upon  the  stage  till  the 
middle  of  the  second  century  ;  when  Christianity,  released 
from  its  first  enemy  by  the  destruction  of  the  Jewish  State, 
turned  round  to  face  and  to  persuade  its  Pagan  despisers, 
and  searched  the  philosophic  armoury  for  weapons  of  effective 
defence ;  and  most  of  all  when  converts  from  heathenism,  as 
Justin  Martyr  and  Athenagoras,  addressed  themselves  on 
behalf  of  their  adopted  faith  to  those  whom  they  had  left 
behind.  From  the  apostolic  age  this  conception  Avas  entirely 
absent :  not  a  ti-ace  of  it  is  to  he  found  in  the  Pauline  letters, 
which  work  their  way  to  similar  issues  by  other  tracks  of 
thought ;  and  not  till  we  listen  to  the  Apologists  in  the  time 
of  the  Antonines  does  this  new  language  fall  upon  the  ear.  It 
was  borrowed  from  the  Greek  jviomg,  so  fruitful  of  speculative 
systems  in  that  age  of  peace  and  letters,  and  was  compelled 
to  take  up  into  its  meaning  the  Christian  facts  and  beliefs. 
The  fourth  Gospel  breathes  the  very  air  of  that  time  :  it  weds 
together  the  ideal  abstractions  of  the  Gnostic  philosophy,  and 
the  personal  history  of  Jesus  Christ ;  and  could  never  have 
been  written  till  both  of  them  had  appeared  upon  the  scene. 
It  is,  indeed,  itself  a  Gnosticism,  only  baptized  and  regener- 
ate ;  no  longer  lingering  aloft  with  the  divine  emanation  in  a 
fanciful  sphere  of  a-ons  and  syzygies,  but  descending  with  it 
into  a  human  life  transcendent  with  holy  light,  and  going 
home  into  immortality.  This  internal  character  assigns  the 
Gospel  to  the  same  time  which  is  indicated  by  the  external 
evidence, — about  the  fifth  decade  of  the  second  century. 

The  distance  of  this  Gospel  from  the  events  of  which  it 
speaks  admits  of  illustration,  and  of  some  approximate 
measurement,  from  another  point  of  view.  The  doctrine 
respecting  the  person  of  Christ  passed  through  three  centuries 
before  it  reached  its  acme,  and  found  its  delinition  ;  the 
tendency  throughout  being  to   invest  him  with  new  predicates 


238  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

of  the  Godhead,  till  the  deification  was  complete.  Of  the 
several  stages  into  which  this  history  divides  itself,  three  at 
least  fall  within  the  limits  of  our  Gospels,  and  of  the 
literary  fragments  which  stand  on  the  same  line  with  them. 
They  may  all  of  them  l^e  regarded  as  interpretations  suc- 
cessively put  upon  the  phrase  "  Son  of  God"  applied  to 
Jesus  by  his  disciples  from  the  moment  when  they  recognized 
him  as  the  Messiah  of  prophecy.  What  was  the  meaning  of 
this  metaphor  ?  of  what  reality  was  it  the  symbol  ?  It 
plainly  attributed  a  divine  element  to  the  nature  of  Jesus. 
When  did  it  enter? — and  how  adjust  itself  into  partnership 
with  his  humanity?  These  were  questions  irresistibly 
thrown  up  by  the  phrase ;  never  contemplated,  indeed,  by 
those  who  first  used  it  in  its  stereotyped  Jewish  sense,  but 
sure  to  be  started  as  soon  as  it  came  with  the  surprise  of 
freshness  upon  hearers  who  had  to  construe  it  for  themselves. 
The  oldest  type  of  answer  to  these  questions  is  embodied  in 
the  account  of  the  baptism  of  Jesus;  but,  in  order  to  see  it  in  its 
purest  form,  we  must  pass  behind  the  synoptists,  and  consult 
the  "  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews,"  a  fragment  of  which 
preserves  probably  an  earlier  tradition.  There,  as  in  Justin 
Martyr  and  in  the  Acts  of  Peter  and  Paul,  the  heavenly  voice 
addresses  Jesus  in  the  Psalmist's  words,  "  Thou  art  my  Son  ; 
this  day  have  I  begotten  thee."  For  this  decl-aration  it  is 
that  the  heavens  are  opened,  the  Spirit  descends,  and  the 
supernatural  light  shines  upon  Jordan.*  According  to  this 
primitive  representation,  the  investiture  with  the  attribute  of 
sonsJdj)  was  reserved  for  the  day  of  baptism  ;  then  it  was  that, 
with  the  descent  of  the  Spirit,  the  divine  element  entered  its 
human  tabernacle,  and  the  heavenly  adoption  was  proclaimed. 
And  this  belief  long  lingered  among  the  Ebionites,  who, 
through  the  changes  of  the  second  and  third  centuries,  still 

*  See  Hilgenfeld,  Novum  Testamentum  extra  Canonem  receptum :  Lib- 
rorum  deperditorum  Fragmenta,  pp.  15,  33.  Compare  Adnott.  Among  the 
several  versions  of  the  heavenly  voice,  the  i^resumption  is  strongly  in  favour 
of  the  direct  citation  of  prophecy,  as  tlie  original  form  of  the  tradition.  And 
though  Epiphanius  had  got  hold  of  a  later  edition  of  the  Ebionite  Gospel 
(for,  to  omit  nothing  traditional,  it  makes  the  voice  say  tico  things),  this  does 
not  impair  the  probability  that  it  contains  a  representation  older  than  that  of 
Mattkew. 


Chap,  n.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  239 

represented  the  faith  of  the  first,  and  lield  tlie  simple 
humanity  of  Jesus  to  have  been  in  no  \\n,j  distinguished  from 
that  of  other  men  till  the  act  of  divine  selection  and  conse- 
cration on  the  banks  of  Jordan.  And  whoever  opens  the 
Gospel  of  Mark,  and  finds  that  the  baptism  is  with  him  "  the 
heginninfj  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,"  can 
to  this  day  receive  no  other  impression.  Nor  can  anything 
be  plainer  than  that  the  genealogies  which  give  the  pedigree 
of  Joseph,  and  are  intended  through  him  to  link  Jesus  with 
the  house  of  David,  must  have  been  drawn  up  under  the 
influence  of  this  belief  as  to  the  conditions  that  were  to  meet 
in  Messiah, — an  earthly  lineage  and  a  heavenly  investiture. 
They  supply  the  human  element,  to  which  the  events  at  the 
])aptism  add  the  di\ine.  Not  till  the  second  condition  followed 
did  the  "  Son  of  David  "  become  the  "  Son  of  God."  To  this 
change  the  Apostle  Paul,  who  knows  nothing  of  the  baptism, 
and  whose  faith  in  Jesus  starts  from  the  other  end  of  his 
career,  assigns  a  different  date  :  with-  him,  it  is  the  resurrection 
which  constitutes  the  heavenly  filiation,  and  in  which  the 
Holy  Spirit  bears  its  testimony  :  "  Jesus  Christ  was  born  of 
the  seed  of  David  accordmg  to  the  flesh  ;  and  declared  to  be 
the  Son  of  God  with  power,  according  to  the  Spirit  of  holiness, 
by  his  resurrection  from  the  dead.''* 

So  long  as  the  new  faith  remained  only  an  inner  variety  of 
domestic  Judaism,  and  addressed  chiefly  those  whose  thought 
flowed  freely  into  Hebrew  moulds,  this  title  "  Son  of  God" 
would  suggest  no  attribute  or  function  except  such  as  might 
be  conferred  at  any  selected  moment  of  initiation.  The 
national  poetry  rendered  the  term  familiar  in  figurative  appli- 
cations, and  left  no  temptation  to  scrutinize  it  closely  for  the 
detection  of  lurking  mysteries.  But,  when  it  fell  freshly 
upon  minds  less  touched  l)y  Hebrew  custom,  it  naturally 
spoke  with  a  different  power,  and  seemed  to  Ihnt  at  some 
divine  relation  more  than  official,  and  l)eyond  the  range  of 
conferred  credentials.  How  could  "  sousJiij) ''  be  taken  up 
and  laid  down  ? — how  be  given  to  one  who  had  it  not  before  ? 
Did  it  not  belong  to  the  personal  identity  itself,  and  determine 
the  very  nature  from  the  first  ?     If  a  Son  of  God  has  lived 

♦  Kom.  i.  3,  4. 


240  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

and  moved  upon  this  earth,  it  could  only  be  from  dull  eyes 
that  the  sacred  lineaments  have  been  entirely  hid :  to  a 
deeper  and  discerning  gaze  some  exceptional  divineness  would 
distinguish  him  from  the  common  crowd  of  contemporaries — 
some  visible  converse  with  the  invisible,  some  grace  of  child- 
hood, some  marvel  in  his  nativity.  The  working  of  thoughts 
like  these  cannot  appear  unnatural  to  any  who  have  studied 
the  history  of  religion  among  men ;  and  will  readily  explain 
how  the  original  date  of  Christ's  divine  filiation  was  pushed 
back  from  his  bajitism  to  his  birth,  and  the  story  arose  of  his 
infancy  and  nativity.  In  this  second  type  of  Christology,  the 
divine  and  the  human  are  already  woven  together  in  the  very 
personality,  the  divine  instead  of  the  manly,  and  the  human 
of  feminine  origin  ;  and  fore-shadowings  of  the  future 
mission  appear  in  the  premonitions  and  dropped  words  of 
boyhood.  Among  the  "  Gospels  of  the  Infancy"  which  were 
thus  brought  into  existence,  the  prefatory  chapters  of  Matthew 
and  Luke  are  perhaps  the  most  ancient.  They  could  not  be  pre- 
fixed, however,  to  the  original  baptismal  scene  without  an  obvi- 
ous discordance  :  if  the  sonship  dated  from  the  nativity,  it  could 
not  at  the  baptism  be  announced  as  beginning  "this  day:" 
and  so  the  phrase  from  the  Messianic  Psalm  was  removed ; 
and  in  its  place  the  prophetic  Spirit  supplied  the  fitter  words, 
"  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased."* 

But  the  exigencies  of  reverential  feeling,  when  once  they 
are  allowed  to  shape  history,  find  no  natural  point  of  rest. 
It  was  not  enough  that  the  divine  element  in  Christ  was 
drawn  back  from  the  opening  of  his  ministry  to  the  opening 
of  his  life.  The  story  of  the  miraculous  birth  is,  after  all, 
but  a  drama,  though  a  sacred  one,  of  human  history:  its 
scene  is  laid  entirely  in  this  world,  and  may  be  found  upon 
the  map ;  and  he  "who  thus  commences  his  providential 
career  is,  with  all  the  wonders  of  his  infancy,  not  less  a  7iew 
being,  fresh  to  existence,  and  having  to  learn  all  its  waj^s,  than 


"■'■  Evidently  an  adapted  citation  from  Isa.  xlii.  1,  "  Behold  my  servant, 
whom  I  upliold  ;  my  chosen,  in  whom  my  soul  delighteth ;  I  lay  my  sj^irit 
upon  him,"— a  passage  which  the  same  Gospel  applies  to  Jesus  (Matt.  xii.  17). 
In  the  baptismal  scene  jrais  becomes  vlos,  to  give  expression  to  the  sonsJiij}  as 
a  permanent  fact. 


Chap.  II. j      PROTESTANTS   AND    THE   SCRIPTUAES.  241 

any  of  his  village  kindred.  For  the  human  side  of  him  this 
conception  would  serve  ;  l>ut  can  the  divine  Ije  horn  ?  and 
shall  he  whose  nature  it  takes  up  have  no  advantage,  in  his 
range  of  being,  over  the  usual  measure, — 

O'irj  nep  (pvXXcou  yfvei),  T0u']8e  kcu  avdpav  ? 

This  could  never  satisfy  a  mind  trained,  directly  or  indirectly, 
in  the  Greek  schools,  where  the  distinction  between  the  di\-ine 
and  the  undivine  is  tantamount  to  that  between  what  ever  i.s, 
and  what  comca  and  goes;  and  every  higher  essence  that 
becomes  incarnate  is  in  itself  eternal,  and  though  entering 
and  quitting  the  phenomenal  field,  neither  jjegins  nor  ceases 
to  he.  It  was  inevitable,  that,  under  the  intiuence  of  this 
mode  of  thought,  the  sonship  to  God  should  yet  retreat  back 
another  step  beyond  all  temporal  limits,  and  become  pre- 
existent  to  the  whole  humanity  of  Jesus ;  so  that  nothing  in 
him  should  be  new  to  this  world,  except  the  corporeal  frame 
and  mortal  conditions  which  were  needful  to  his  relations 
with  men.  Thus  there  arises,  for  the  transcendent  element 
in  Christ,  a  history  prior  to  its  personal  manifestation  in 
Palestine  ;  a  "  glory  before  the  world  was  ;  "  an  eternity  "  in 
the  bosom  of  the  Father  ;  "  a  subsistence  blended  in  intimate 
union  with  God.  And  when  this  transcendent  perfection 
"  became  flesh,"  and  "  dwelt  among  us,  full  of  grace  and 
truth,"  it  was  not  to  give  a  mere  refinement  to  a  human 
organism  and  elevation  to  a  human  character,  but  to  mani- 
fest, under  the  disguise  and  amid  the  shadows  of  a  life  like 
ours,  the  light  of  a  divine  nature  belonging  to  the  eternal 
world  ;  so  that,  as  he  moved  along  the  ways  of  men,  when- 
ever the  winds  of  change  and  circumstance  stirred  the  folds 
and  parted  the  garb  of  his  humanity,  there  was  a  flash  of 
mystic  splendours  which  kindled  the  face  of  disciples,  and 
drove  the  guilty  from  his  sight.  Such  is  the  l)eing  presented 
to  us  in  the  fourth  evangelist's  figure  of  Christ,  not  only  in 
the  memorable  proem  which  gives  his  attributes  "  before  all 
worlds  "  and  in  the  origination  of  all  worlds,  but  in  the  whole 
construction  of  the  Gospel  where  it  tells  of  his  sojourn  among 
men.  In  what  it  narrates,  in  what  it  utters,  in  what  it 
suppresses,  in  the  order  of  its  incidents  and  the  tone  of  its 

R 


242  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

discourses,  in  its  selection  of  miracles,  in  its  interpretation  of 
the  cross  and  of  the  resurrection, — the  one  pervading  purpose 
of  the  author  is  to  illustrate  this  loftier  theory  of  the  "  Son  of 
God."  There  is  no  baptismal  adoption,  only  a  sign  sent  for 
the  information  of  the  Baptist.  There  is  no  miraculous 
nativity,  as  if  the  heavenly  and  earthly  in  him  were  con- 
nate. For  the  origin  of  the  divine  element,  we  are  carried 
past  the  banks  of  Jordan,  past  the  cradle  in  Nazareth,  or  the 
manger  at  Bethlehem,  to  "  the  beginning,"  which  in  itself  is 
eternal,  and  has  no  beginning. 

It  is  surely  not  a  small  interval  that  separates  this  third 
stadium  from  its  antecedents.  But,  waiving  all  attempt  at 
nicer  measurement,  I  am  content  to  say,  it  is  at  all  events 
greater  than  could  be  traversed  by  a  single  mind.  Who  that 
appreciates  the  tenacity  of  religious  conceptions  can  believe 
that  one  and  the  same  person  could  not  only  live  through  the 
genesis  of  these  three  successive  types  of  opinion,  1)ut  himself 
adopt  them  all  ?  Yet,  if  the  son  of  Zebedee  were  the  writer 
of  the  Logos  Gospel,  no  less  than  this  would  be  demanded  of 
our  credulity.  If  this  is  inadmissible,  we  must  fall  back  on 
the  real  probability,  that  these  three  doctrines  span  no  fewer 
than  four  generations  ;  and  that  even  the  second  of  them  is 
altogether  post-apostolic. 

From  all  quarters,  then,  does  evidence  flow  in,  that  the 
only  Gospel  which  is  composed  and  not  merely  compiled  and 
edited,  and  for  which,  therefore,  a  single  writer  is  responsible, 
has  its  birthday  in  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  and  is 
not  the  work  of  a  witness  at  all.  Nor,  in  the  moulding  of  it, 
does  the  author  proceed  under  the  control  of  an  historical 
purpose, — to  tell  objective  facts  in  the  order  and  the  form  of 
the  best  accredited  tradition.  His  animating  motive  is 
doctrinal,  as  he  himself  declares,*— to  convince  his  readers 
that  Jesus  is  "  the  Son  of  God,''  in  the  transcendent  sense 
which  this  phrase  bore  to  his  own  thought ;  and  he  had  so 
long  looked  at  the  evangelical  biographies  through  the 
glorifying  haze  of  that  idea,  that  whatever  would  not  take  its 
richer  light  dropped  into  the  shade  and  disappeared,  and  those 
elements  alone  stood  out  on  w^hich  the  heave^ily  tints  would 

*  John  XX.  31. 


Chap.  11.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  243 

lie.  As  the  story  had  transfigured  itself  to  him,  so  did  he 
present  it  transfigured  to  his  readers ;  in  a  form  true,  as  he 
held,  with  a  deeper  truth  than  that  of  outward  circumstance ; 
rendering,  if  not  the  very  words  as  they  were  heard,  the  inner 
meaning  that  tliey  carried  ;  and  comprising  nothing  but  that 
which  mi[j]it  have  been,  and  the  equivalent  of  which  could 
hardly  fail  to  be,  when  such  a  nature  was  moving  on  such  a 
scene.  This  kind  of  historical  drama  is  full  of  interest  as  an 
exponent  of  its  own  time,  but  is  not  a  new  witness  for  the 
time  of  which  it  speaks. 

For  our  knowledge,  then,  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  except  so  far 
as  certain  features  of  it  are  assumed  in  some  of  the  Epistles 
and  the  Apocalypse,  we  are  thrown  upon  the  remains  of 
popular  tradition  collected  by  our  synoptists, — remains  which 
are  doubtless  rich  in  fragments  original  and  true,  but  which 
are  assuredly  of  mixed  character  and  worth,  and  cannot 
pretend  to  carry  the  guarantee  of  known  and  nameable  eye- 
witnesses. Priceless  as  sources  of  probable  history,  they  are 
unserviceable  for  a  theory  of  documentary  authority. 


§  3.   Till'  Acts  of  the  Apostles. 

The  life  of  .Jesus  does  not  exhaust  the  Protestant  sources  of 
authority.  Beyond  the  tragic  catastrophe  on  Calvary,  beyond 
the  day  of  ascension,  the  divine  drama  still  runs  on,  and  enters 
upon  new  acts,  with  ever  widening  stage,  and  scenery  more 
quick  to  vary.  The  holy  visitant  was  personally  withdrawn ; 
but  from  his  changed  al)ode  he  still  held  communion  with  the 
"  little  flock  "  he  had  left  behind,  and  sent  a  guiding  inspira- 
tion to  replace  the  presence  they  had  lost,  to  interpret  the  past 
they  had  so  little  understood,  to  reveal  tlie  future  which 
they  were  entitled  to  promise,  and  "lead  them  into  all 
truth "  related  to  their  immediate  needs.  This  second 
stadium  of  supernatural  history  had  for  its  object  the 
formation  of  the  Christian  Church  :  it  crystallized  in  a  livinf^ 
society  with  permanent  usages  the  consecrating  influence 
which  for  a  season  had  dwelt  among  mankind,  and,  by 
warding  off  for  a  while  the  intrusion  of  error  and  infiriiiitv, 


244  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

secured  an  interior  space  within  wliicli  the  pure  model 
might  compact  itself  and  g^o^Y,  and  leave  its  image  and 
its  record  as  an  ideal  for  all  times. 

If  the  claim  of  authority  is  thus  to  he  extended  over  the 
apostolic  age,  so  must  its  credentials  ;  and,  for  the  miraculous 
phenomena  on  which  it  rests,  we  must  repeat  the  demand  for 
appreciable  and  unexceptionable  testimony,  which  has  already 
been  preferred  in  the  case  of  the  Gospels.  Our  only  historical 
sketch  of  Christian  affairs  in  the  years  succeeding  the  personal 
ministry  of  Jesus  is  found  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles ;  and 
on  the  value  of  the  recitals  in  that  book  it  depends  whether 
we  recognize  in  the  teachings  and  metliods  of  the  primitive 
church  the  expression  of  authoritative  mspiration.  ^^^lo  is  it, 
then,  that  here  tells  the  story  of  a  nascent  Christendom  ? 
Does  he  report  his  name  ?  and,  if  so,  does  it  guarantee  the 
adequacy  of  his  knowledge,  and  the  trustworthiness  of  his 
narrative  ?  Or,  if  we  know  not  who  he  is,  have  we  the  means 
of  checking  and  testing  any  of  his  statements,  so  as  to  gain 
an  approximate  measure  of  the  credibility  of  the  rest  ? 

Fortunately,  the  Book  of  Acts,  from  various  causes,  admits 
of  historical  appreciation  more  readily  than  the  narratives  to 
which  it  gives  the  sequel.  It  is  not  entirely  insulated.  It 
stands  in  literary  relation  with  the  third  Gospel,  professing  to 
proceed  from  the  same  hand,  and  to  continue  the  same  story. 
It  stands  in  substantive  relation  to  the  Pauline  letters,  telling 
over  again  biographical  incidents  of  which  the  apostle  has 
given  his  own  account,  and  drawing  of  him  a  portraiture 
which  we  may  compare  with  his  self-presentation.  It  furnishes 
a  picture  of  the  early  Christian  community,  with  the  interior 
life  of  which  every  page  of  the  apostle's  writings  ferments  :  so 
that,  apart  from  its  occasional  points  of  contact  with  external 
secular  history,  we  have  resources  within  the  New  Testament 
itself  for  criticallv  estimating  the  contents  of  the  book. 

A.  Relation  to  Luke's  Gospel. 

The  preamble  of  the  work,  which  addresses  it,  like  the  third 
Gospel,  to  a  certain  Theophilus,  and  refers  to  his  previous 
reception  of  just  such  an  account  of  the  mmistry  of  Christ,  has 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  245 

naturally    linked    together    the   t^YO    writings   as    successive 
chapters,  from  the  same  hand,  of  one  continuous  history.     The 
reality  of  this  relation  between  them  has  recently,  it  is  true, 
been  called  in  question  by  Scholten,  who,  finding  in  the  Gospel 
a  tone  of  hostility  to  Jewish  Christianity,  which  has  died  away 
in  the  Book  of  Acts,  refers  them  to  different  sources;  and  will 
allow  to  the  author  of  the  latter  no  hand  in  the  former,  except 
as  editor  and  interpolator.*     This  conclusion,  however,  seems 
to  overstrain  the  difference  of  tendency   in  the  two  writings. 
It  is  founded  on  the  idea,  that,  in  the  early  struggle  between 
the  Pauline  and  the  Petrine  Christianity,  the  evangehst  takes 
sides  with  the  former,  while  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Acts 
balances  and  reconciles  the  two.     But  in  fact  all  that  the 
writer  cares  al)out,  in  either  case,  is  the   ludceisality  of  the 
Gospel:  he  will  not  have  it  limited  to  Israel,  but  accessible  to 
the  Samaritan  and  the  heathen.     Only  so  far  as  they  infringe 
this  principle,  does  he  disparage  the  Jewish  disciples  :  only  so 
far  as  they  represent  it,  does  he  favour  the  Pauline  school. 
The  Catholicity  of  the  third  Gospel  seeks  no  support  from  the 
special  theology  of  the  apostle  of  the  Gentiles ;  and  that  of 
the   Book   of  Acts   is    worked   out   by  his  predecessors  and 
opponents.     The  characteristics  of  both  parties  are  washed 
out,  and  a  comprehensive  unity  is  sought  by  condemning  or 
ignoring  them  as  exceptional  extremes.     No  doubt  this  common 
preconception  works  to  a  different  end  in  the  two  writings, — 
in  the  Gospel,  to  vindicate  the   universality  of  the  religion 
against   those   who  would  narrow  it;    in  the  Book  of  Acts, 
to  claim  the  credit  of  this  universality  for  both  the  parties 
alike,  that  entered  as  constituents  into   the   early   Church. 
There  is  nothing  in  this  difference  to  require  the  hypothesis  of 
separate  authorship;    while  the  literary   evidence,  from  the 
complexion  of  the  language,  and  organism  of  the  style,  clearly 
indicates  the  action  of  the  same  mmd  and  hand. 

Admitting,  then,  on  behalf  of  the  Book  of  Acts,  a  complete 
community  of  interest  with  the  third  Gospel,  i.e.,  that  it  is  a 

■*  Is  der  derde  Evangelist  de  Schryver  van  het  boek  dcr  Handelingen? 
Critisch  Onderzoek.  J.  H.  Scholten  :  Leiden,  1873.  I  have  only  a  second- 
hand knowledge  of  this  treatise,  through  German  reviews.  An  abstract  of  it 
is  given  by  Hilgenfeld  in  his  Zeitschrift  fiir  wissenschaftliche  Theologie: 
17  Jahrgang.     Heft  3,  p.  441  scqq^. 


246  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIAT.LY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

sequel  furnished  by  the  same  writer,  in  further  prosecution  of 
the  same  object,  and  with  no  very  important  interval  of 
time,  we  may  apply  to  its  case  some  of  the  conclusions  already 
reached  in  tracing  the  history  of  its  companion.  The  external 
testimony  which  shows  us  the  text  of  the  evangelist  in  Mar- 
cion's  hand  gives,  also,  the  lower  limit  to  our  search  for  the 
later  treatise ;  and  the  date,  which,  on  internal  grounds,  we 
have  assigned  to  the  Gospel,  will  approximately  serve  for  its 
sequel ;  unless,  indeed,  its  ow'n  contents  should  carry  in  them 
fresh  marks  of  time  wiiich  oblige  us  to  correct  our  former  cal- 
culation in  favour  of  an  earlier  time.  Such  mark  of  time, 
though  only  of  a  negative  character,  some  critics  have  detected 
in  the  entire  silence  of  the  book  respecting  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  under  Titus.  No  reader  could  suspect  that  the 
city,  with  its  temple  and  its  local  hierarchy,  which  supplied 
the  scene  of  so  many  incidents,  no  longer  existed;  and,  had 
they  already  perished,  this  calm  presentation  of  them,  as 
though  nothing  had  happened  to  them,  would  have  been 
impossible,  it  is  said,  to  the  Christian  historian.  On  this 
ground  we  are  asked  to  fix  the  publication  of  his  work  as  early 
as  the  year  a.d.  69.*  This  argument  would  apply  with  some 
force  to  a  writer  in  the  reign  of  Titus,  w4iile  the  fall  of  Judsea 
was  still  fresh,  and,  perhaps,  to  a  Jewish  Christian  writer  till 
the  end  of  the  century.  But  the  impression  of  even  national 
disasters,  still  more  of  foreign  ones,  does  not  long  remain 
intense;  and  in  the  second  generation  a  Gentile  writer 
might  draw  scenes  from  the  life  of  the  sacred  city,  without 
thinking  of  the  siege  which  it  had  suffered  in  the  days  of  his 
grandfathers.  Historical  silence  about  particular  events  is  in 
itself  but  poor  evidence  of  literary  chronology;  for  it  may 
exist  either  because  they  have  not  yet  happened,  or  because 
they  have  happened  long  enough  to  be  occasionally  forgotten. 
In  the  present  instance,  the  latter  is  plainly  the  operative 
cause.  In  the  author's  earlier  production,  clear  traces  appear 
that  he  is  already  looking  back  on  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem ; 
for  no  one  who  compares  the  definite  words  (Luke  xxi.  20-24) 
about  Jerusalem  being  compassed  with  armies,  and  trodden 
down  by  the  Gentiles,  and  her  people  falling  by  the  edge  of 

*  Schneckenburger,  Ueber  deu  Zweck  der  Apostelgeschichte,  p.  231. 


Chap.  11.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  247 

the  sword,  and  being  dispersed  among  all  nations,  with  the 
indefinite  description  of  the  future  Parusia  in  which  they  are 
imbedded,  can  fail  to  see  in  them  a  raticiniion  post  eventum. 
It  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  characteristic  features  of  the  third 
Gospel,  that,  throughout  its  alleged  prophecies  of  the  latter 
days,  "  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  man"  is  disengaged  from 
its  immediate  connection  with  the  Eoman  war,  and  thrown 
vaguely  forward,  as  the  thing  signified  is  separated  from  the 
sign ;  and,  though  it  is  still  promised  within  the  lifetime  of 
some  who  had  been  present  at  its  preaching  in  Galilee,  it  is 
mentioned  with  an  anxious  sense  of  disappointed  waiting  and 
delay.  It  is  illustrated  by  the  story  of  the  lord  of  the  vine- 
yard, who  will  indeed  return,  but  not  till  after  he  has  dwelt 
in  a  far  country  ''for  a  hni;/  time.''*  God  will  assuredly 
avenge  his  own  elect;  but  ah!  not  till  he  has  "home  long  icitli 
tJtem," — so  long  as  to  weary  out  what  faith  there  is  upon  the 
earth. t  The  disciples  must  gird  themselves  up  for  a  patient 
vigil,  and  not  look  for  the  Deliverer  at  the  opening  of  the 
night.  The  second  watch  may  pass,  for  aught  they  know ; 
nay,  even  the  third,  ere  the  sound  of  his  approach  is  heard  ; 
and  their  blessing  lies  in  their  'ueing  awake  to  meet  him,  how- 
ever near  the  morning. |  It  is  not  to  make  immediate  way 
for  him  that  Jerusalem  is  to  be  trodden  down;  it  is  to  ])e 
handed  to  Gentiles  first :  and  not  till  their  history  is  worked 
out,  and  their  "  times  fulfilled,"  will  it  become  the  city  of  the 
great  King.§  This  language  unmistakably  speaks  the  feeling 
of  almost  exhausted  patience  which  marked  the  years  near 
the  border  of  the  two  centuries,  and  refers  even  the  first  of 
our  author's  productions  to  the  period  rather  of  Trajan  than 
of  Titus. 

'^  Luke  XX.  9  ;  comp.  ^latt.  xxi.  33,  where  this  expression  of  delay  is  ahscnt. 

t  Luke  xviii.  7,  8. 

t  Lukexii.38.  How  late  must  be  tlic  date  which  would  oppress  the  writer 
with  the  sense  of  delay  we  cannot,  perhaps,  safely  infer  from  his  language. 
But  if  the  term  wliich  lie  thus  divides  is  taken  to  be  the  possible  lifetime  of 
one  of  the  children  whom  Jesus  blessed  (using  the  measure  given  in  Luke  ix. 
27),  and  estimated  at  eighty  remaining  years,  each  of  the  "watches"  (wliich 
arc  quarters)  will  be  twenty  ;  and  three  of  them,  reckoned  from  the  death  of 
Christ,  would  bring  us  to  about  a.d.  95  ;  and  the  fourth  would  not  expire  till 
about  A.D.  115.  Tlie  expression  about  tiie  watches  is  not  found  in  Matt. 
xxiv.  -13.  §  Luke  xxi.  24. 


248  A  UTH  ORITY  A  R  TIFICIA  LL  Y  M ISP  LA  CED.    [Book  1 1. 

Nor  is  the  Book  of  Acts  itself  entirely  Vvithout  indications 
of  age  which  accord  with  this  estimate.  The  witnesses 
against  Stephen  are  made  to  charge  him  with  ominous 
prophecies  against  "  the  holy  place," — that  this  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  should  destroy  it,  and  change  the  Mosaic  customs.* 
The  author,  who  wished  to  exhibit  Stephen  as  a  true  prophet, 
even  when  misunderstood,  would  not  have  ventured  on  this 
representation  till  history  had  verified  the  word.t  There 
are  also  traces  of  an  ecclesiastical  constitution,  and  hierarchical 
ideas,  quite  out  of  character  with  the  apostolic  age,  and 
belonging  to  a  more  advanced  religious  organization.  The 
imparting  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  reserved  as  the  exclusive 
prerogative  of  the  apostles,  and  cannot  take  place  in  Samaria 

*  Acts  vi.  13,  14. 

f  It  is  a  difficult  question  what  the  author  could  mean  in  calling  these 
witnesses  "false  "  ;  but  certainly  he  did  not  intend  to  disclaim  for  Stephen 
words  of  slight  and  disparagement  with  regard  to  the  temple  ;  for  the  very- 
speech  which  follows,  in  reply  to  the  charge,  condemns  the  building  of  the 
temple,  and  contrasts  it  as  the  gratuitous  attempt  of  Solomon  (vii.  47)  to 
localize  the  abode  of  God  (.oiicos  tov  6eov)  with  the  construction,  after  a  divine 
pattern  (vii.  44),  of  the  shifting  tabernacle  which  symbolized  the  presence  of 
God  on  every  spot  (crKrjvrj  rov  iiapTvpiov).  Instead  of  denying  his  alleged 
threats  against  the  teraple,  the  speaker  inveighs  against  its  existence  as  an 
example  of  the  perversity  and  violation  of  covenant  which  ran  through  the 
whole  national  history.  This  is  virtually  to  own  the  charge,  and  not  to 
refute  it.     How,  then,  are  the  witnesses  "false  "  ?     In  two  ways  : — ■ 

1.  They  represented  Stephen  as  denouncing  not  only  the  temple,  but  the 
law  (vi.  13)  :  whereas  he  treats  it  as  divinely  given  (vii.  53)  "  by  the  minis- 
tration of  angels  "  ;  and  rests  his  whole  case  against  the  Jewish  people  on 
this,  that  they  have  never  kept  the  law  ;  but  while  God  has  always  done,  and 
more  than  done,  his  part,  they  have  never  been  true  to  theirs. 

2.  The  witnesses,  in  reporting  Stephen's  words  about  the  temple,  made  its 
threatened  destruction  the  direct  act  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  as  if  it  were  to 
proceed  from  some  vengeance  of  his,  and  he  were  personally  answerable  for 
it.  So  far,  however,  is  this  from  being  true,  in  the  writer's  estimate,  that  it 
is  the  Jews  themselves  who  are  responsible  for  the  inevitable  disaster.  By 
their  attempt  to  appropriate  God,  whose  essence  escapes  all  exclusive  rela- 
tions, they  have  rendered  it  necessary  to  destroy  the  stronghold  of  their 
unrighteous  monox)oly,  and  to  carry  the  divine  meaning  of  the  law  and  the 
prophets  direct  to  the  Gentiles,  instead  of  trusting  any  longer  to  the  media- 
tion of  Israel.  The  disposition  to  distinguish  between  the  Old  Testament 
dispensation  and  the  temple,  to  condemn  the  latter  as  a  human  limitation, 
but  develop  from  the  former  the  principles  of  universal  religion,  is  in  har- 
mony with  the  whole  theology  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  The  phrase 
"  false  witnesses,"  in  INIatt.  xxvi.  CO,  Gl,  raises  a  similar  difficulty,  which 
must  there  be  met  in  a  different  way. 


Cliap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS   AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  249 

till  Peter  or  John  has  gone  down  to  put  hands  on  the 
baptized.*  The  Ephesian  disciples  are  "  a  flock  "  under  the 
pastoral  charge  of  "elders,"  duly  appointed  by  the  Holy 
Spirit;  and  these  "overseers"  are  regarded,  not  simply  as 
local  administrators,  hut  as  office-hearers  in  a  general  "  climxh 
of  the  Lord,  which  he  has  purchased  with  his  own  l)lood."t 
This  conception  of  a  catholic  body,  under  governance  of  a 
sacred  order,  and  the  application  to  it  of  the  doctrine  of 
redemption,  betrays  modes  of  thought  prevailing  not  before 
the  end  of  the  first  century.  The  language,  also,  in  which 
Paul  is  made  to  speak  of  the  theological  dissensions  which 
will  break  out  among  the  Christians  of  Asia, — "  of  grievous 
wolves "  that  will  enter  the  fold,  and  even  rise  up  from 
among  themselves,  drawing  after  them  a  train  of  followers  by 
their  perverse  teachings,  t — suits  nothing  so  well  as  the  out- 
break of  the  Gnostic  sects,  which  so  agitated  the  Church  of 
the  second  century.  If  these  are  instances  of  anachronism, 
they  invalidate,  no  doubt,  the  authenticity  of  the  speeches 
and  narratives  in  which  they  are  contained.  But  for  this  we 
are  prepared  by  so  conspicuous  an  example  of  invention,  that 
the  unwelcome  character  of  the  inference  cannot  excuse  any 
apologetic  colouring  of  the  facts.  In  the  deliberations  of  the 
Sanhedrim  on  the  defiant  attitude  of  Peter  and  the  other 
preaching  apostles, §  Gamaliel  counsels  non-interference,  and 
a  surrender  of  the  cause  to  the  judgment  of  results.  He 
supports  his  advice  by  appeal  to  two  analogous  cases  which 
may  serve  for  precedents ;  viz.,  that  of  the  pretender 
Theudas,  who  set  up  for  a  prophet,  and  drew  a  multitude 
after  him,  with  no  result  but  death  to  himself,  and  dispersion 
to  his  people ;  and,  "  after  tJtis,''  of  Judas  of  Galilee,  who 
raised  an  insurrection  against  the  Pioman  assessment  under 
Quirinus,  only  to  perish,  and  bring  his  followers  to  a  ruinous 
break-up.  Now,  these  instances,  which  are  expressly  cited  as 
consecutive,  occurred  in  just  the  opposite  order ;  and  that  of 
Theudas  took  place  under  the  procurator  Cuspius  Fadus,  in 
the  reign  of  Caligula,  ten  or  twelve  years  after  the  date  of 


*  Acts  viii.  14-17.  t  Acts  xx.  17-28. 

*  Acts  XX.  29,  30.  §  Acts  v.  33-40. 


250  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Gamaliel's  reported  speech.*  This  positive  proof  that  the 
address  is  fictitious  cannot  but  make  us  less  reluctant  to 
accept  elsewhere  at  their  proper  value  slighter  indications  of 
the  same  freedom  of  invention. 

So  far,  then,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  the  date  assigned 
to  the  third  Gospel  serving  also  approximately  for  the  Book 
of  Acts.  But,  as  the  one  is  a  sequel  to  the  other,  some 
interest  attaches  to  the  probable  interval  between  them.  To 
guide  our  judgment  here,  we  have  only  one  uncertain  clew. 
The  earlier  book  closes  with  a  notice  of  the  ascension  of 
Jesus :  the  later  one  opens  with  a  more  explicit  account  of 
the  same  event.  So  far  as  they  are  in  accordance,  they  might 
have  been  written  on  successive  days ;  but,  if  they  materially 
differ,  time  must  be  allowed  for  the  first  type  of  tradition  to 
be  replaced  by  another ;  and  it  is  reasonable  to  say,  that,  the 
larger  the  difference,  the  longer  the  time. 

The  concluding  chapter  of  the  Gospel  comprises  within  the 
compass  of  a  single  day  everything  subsequent  to  the  entomb- 
ment of  Jesus ;  the  resurrection  opening  the  morning,  the 
ascension  closing  the  evening.!  The  Book  of  Acts  expands 
this  one  day  into  forty,  and,  for  two  meetings  of  the  disciples 
with  their  risen  Master,  substitutes  an  indefinite  number  of 
such  "infallible  proofs"  by  living  intercourse. t  In  the 
Gospel  the  ascension  is  despatched  in  a  phrase  ("  was  taken 
up  into  heaven  "),  supposed  by  Scholten  to  be  an  editorial 
addition  to  the  original  text :  §  in  the  Acts,  it  is  presented 
with  descriptive  detail,  —  the  uplifted  form,  the  receiving 
cloud,  the  gazing  disciples,  the  white-apparelled  angels  and 
their  message.!!  The  place  also,  which,  in  the  earlier  account, 
is  at  Bethany,  fifteen  furlongs  from  the  city,  is  shifted  to  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  one-third  of  that  distance  from  Jerusalem. 11 

*  For  Theudas,  see  Josephus,  Ant.  XX.  v.  1  ;  for  Judas,  Ant.  XVIII.  i.  1,  6, 
XX.  V.  2;  B.  Jud.  II.  viii.  1.  In  one  of  these  passages,  Josephus  happens  to 
mention  Judas  just  after  Theudas :  is  this  the  source  of  our  author's  mis- 
take ?  It  is  not  the  only  indication  of  an  apparent  acquaintance  with 
Josephus. 

t  xxiv.  1,  13,  33,  36,  50,  51.  %  i.  3.  §  xsiv.  51.  1|  i.  9-11. 

1[  Luke  xxiv.  50  ;  Acts  i.  12.  It  lias  been  said  that,  Bethany  being  on  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  the  two  terms  may  be  used  of  the  same  spot.  But  the 
additional  definition  in  Acts  i.  12  ("  distant  from  Jerusalem  a  sabbath  day's 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCA'/PTC/RES.         251 

In  both  narratives,  but  more  fully  in  the  latter,  Jesus  enjoins 
his  apostles  to  await  in  Jerusalem  the  descent  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  upon  them  :  and  the  only  new  feature  in  the  second 
recital  is  this, — that  when  pressed  to  say  whether,  with  the 
descent  of  the  Spirit,  will  come  also  his  Messianic  restoration 
of  the  kingdom  to  Israel,  he  gives  a  twofold  answer  :  as  for 
the  season  of  the  kingdom,  he  desires  them  to  leave  it  to  God  ; 
as  for  its  ramie,  he  bids  them  preach  it  not  to  "  Israel  "  alone, 
but  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Need  we  say  that  the  historian 
who  thus  writes  is  sure  of  the  tmiversaliti)  of  the  "kingdom," 
but  has  had  to  put  its  date  into  the  indefinite  ?  No  usages  of 
regular  literature  enable  us  to  conceive  how  a  writer  could 
over  give  two  such  reports  of  the  same  incident  with  apparent 
indifference  to  their  discrepanc}'.  Had  his  mind  been  simply 
occupied  with  the  historian's  proper  end,  wholly  intent  on 
seeing  things  as  they  really  lie  in  the  past,  the  phenomenon 
would  have  been  impossible.  But  where  an  author  writes 
with  an  object,  or  under  the  pre-engagement  of  a  dominant 
feeling  or  idea,  it  is  surprising  how  historical  materials,  now 
reduced  to  a  secondary  and  instrumental  place, — still  more 
how  tradition  that  has  never  firmly  set, — may  become  soft 
under  the  pressure  of  his  hand,  and  mould  itself  to  the  shape 
of  his  own  thought  ;  and  if  twice,  with  different  purpose,  he 
should  have  to  work  up  the  same  elements  to  the  needful 
symmetry,  they  will  insensibly  take  incompatible  forms, 
which  he  will  not  care  to  bring  to  coalescence.  He  cannot, 
however,  be  supposed  to  produce  the  two  representations  at 
once,  or  close  together :  there  must  be  time  for  the  impression 
of  the  one  to  grow  faint  before  he  can  set  himself  to  create  the 
other, — time  for  a  second  interest,  or  drift  of  feeling,  to  suc- 
ceed to  the  first,  and  throAV  itself  on  some  new  problem.  In 
the  present  case,  there  is  both  this  inward  necessity-  f<>r  time 
between  our  author's  two  works,  and  also  an  outward  neces- 
sity, founded  on  the  modification  of  the  materials  with  which 
he  had  to  deal. 

Early  Christian  tradition  held  together,  as  two  phases  of 
the  same  ev^nt  attached  to   the  same  day,  the    resurrection 

journey,"  equal  to  two  thousand  paces,  or  between  five  and  six  furlongs),  takes 
us  only  to  tlie  top  of  the  hill,  twice  as  far  from  Bethany  as  from  Jerusalem. 


252  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Rook  n. 

and  the  ascension  of  Christ ;  and  in  this  form  it  still  appears, 
as  we  have  seen  in  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas.  So  long  as  this 
was  the  case,  the  reports  of  appearances  on  the  part  of  the 
risen  Christ  must  have  been  extremely  few :  accordingly,  in 
Mark  there  is  actually  not  one ;  *  in  Matthew,  who,  with 
John,  knows  nothing  of  the  ascension,  only  two,  of  which  one 
is  subordinate  to  the  other  ;  and,  in  Luke,  only  two,  on  the 
same  day.  But  as  reports  accumulated  of  interviews  with 
Jesus,  or  visions  of  him,  as  far  apart  as  Galilee  from  Jeru- 
salem, room  had  to  be  found  for  the  growing  series  ;  and  his 
departure  from  the  world  was  separated  from  his  resurrection 
and  variously  postponed, — eight  days  for  the  conversion  of 
Thomas,  t  indefinitely  for  the  scene  at  the  Sea  of  Tiberias 
(declared  to  be  the  third  appearance),!  forty  days  for  the 
"  many  infallible  proofs,"  and  the  instructions  "  respecting 
the  kingdom,"  which  completed  the  apostles'  preparation  to 
become  organs  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Other  causes  concurred  to 
throw  the  ascension  forward  into  a  time  of  its  own,  and  give 
it  prominence  as  an  independent  event.  In  the  oldest  accounts 
of  the  manifestations  of  Jesus  after  death,  beginning  with 
those  of  Paul,  he  is  presented  in  an  impalpable  or  phantasmic 
form,  now  as  an  inward  revelation, §  now  as  a  vision,!,  or  a 
voice  ;  IT  and,  again,  as  something  that  might  be  mistaken  for 
"  a  spirit,"  or  open  to  a  doubt ;  **  as  able  to  vanish  in  an  in- 
stant ;  f  t  as  coming  through  shut  doors.  \  \  This  representation 
seemed  to  lie  too  near  the  borders  of  possible  subjective  illu- 
sion ;  it  left  the  means  of  personal  identification  obscure  or 
inadequate ;  and,  even  apart  from  the  question  of  evidence,  it 
favoured  a  Docctic  view  of  the  person  of  Christ, — that  the 
divine  nature,  which  lived  on  earth,  and  passed  into  heaven,  was 
other  than  the  man  Jesus  who  died  upon  the  cross,  and 
separated  from  him  on  Calvary.  In  reaction  from  these 
dangers,  stress  would  naturally  be  laid  on  all  reported  appear- 
ances which  carried  in  them  local  and  personal  features,  and 

*  i.e.,  excluding  the  later  appendix,  which  does  not  belong  to  the  original 
Gospel,  xvi.  9,  to  the  end. 
t  John  XX.  26.  J  John  xxi.  14.  §  Gal.  i.  16. 

II  1  Cor.  XV.  3.  ^2  Cor.  xii.  9. 

**  Luke  xxiv.  37  ;  :Matt.  xxviii.  17. 
tt  Luke  xxiv.  31.  ft  John  xx.  19.  26. 


Chap.  II. J      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  253 

assimilated  the  risen  life  to  an  ordinary  human  life.  The 
traces  of  individuality,  and  even  organic  continuity,  would  be 
collected,  and  pushed  to  their  furthest  consequences  ;  for,  if 
the  sameness  were  disturbed  between  the  past  Jesus  and  the 
future  Christ,  the  whole  Messianic  theory  which  had  been 
wrought  out  would  break  down.  Hence  the  insistency  of  the 
later  evangelical  records  on  acts  of  the  risen  Christ  corrective 
of  the  former  impression, — on  his  eating  with  the  apostles,* 
on  his  offering  them  his  hands  and  feet  to  feel,t  on  his  bidding 
Thomas  put  his  finger  into  the  nail-prints  on  his  hands  and 
the  wound  in  his  side.  \  This  escape  from  one  difficulty  in- 
duced, however,  another  :  the  human  body  with  which  tradi- 
tion had  thus  encumbered  itself  remained  as  a  serious  burden 
on  its  hands,  which  had  again  to  be  removed  by  recourse  to  a 
physical  and  visible  ascension.  For  the  growth  of  belief,  often 
as  we  may  trace  the  stages  of  its  modification,  we  have  no 
exact  chronometer  ;  and  how  long  it  would  require  for  the  faith 
in  the  risen  Christ  to  emerge  into  this  stupendous  form,  it  is 
impossible  to  define ;  l)ut  certainly  it  could  not  be  till  the  sup- 
posed witnesses  were  beyond  the  reach  of  questioning,  and  the 
conception  of  his  heavenly  life  and  expected  return  had  so 
fastened  itself  in  the  scenery  of  the  Christian's  real  world  as 
to  render  easy  the  insertion  of  this  one  link  of  marvel  more. 
Our  author,  therefore,  is  dealing,  in  his  second  work,  with  far 
later  elements  of  tradition  than  in  his  first. 

The  relative  age  of  his  materials,  however,  is  not  necessarily 
that  of  his  own  later  work  upon  them  ;  indeed,  he  incorporates 
with  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  large  portions  of  a  traveller's 
journal,  evidently  proceeding  from  some  companion  of  Paul, 
and  so  mingles  in  the  same  production  the  newest  and  the 
oldest  records  of  Christian  things.  But  some  further  light  on 
the  relation  of  the  two  books  may,  perhaps,  be  gained  by  com- 
parison of  their  characteristic  aim  and  ruling  idea. 

Christianity,  in  its  primary  spring,  is  the  power  of  a  unique 
personality.  That  power,  exercised  upon  minds  pre-occupied 
with  Jewish  conceptions,  inevitably  burst  into  a  l)elief,  not 
realized,  it  is  probable,  till  after  the  departure  of  Jesus,  that 

*  Luke  xxiv.  1-3.  f  Luke  xxiv.  39.  i  John  xx.  25-27. 


254  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

he  would  prove  to  be  the  promised  Messiah,  the  inaugurator 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  upon  earth.  Looking  back  upon 
the  marvellous  year  which  had  wrapped  them  in  a  trance  of 
reverence,  and  suffusing  with  new  love  and  sorrow  that 
gracious  and  majestic  presence,  his  disci2:)les  could  not  but 
think,  that,  though  he  was  not  yet  Messiah,  he  was  marked 
out  to  be  so  :  that  his  past  life  was  but  a  preluding  disguise  ; 
and  that  the  real  history  enfolded  within  him  was  j^et  in 
reserve.  That  death  could  not  detain,  but  only  glorify  him  ; 
that  he  was  on  its  brighter  side,  and  on  the  eve  of  returning 
thence  to  bring  in  the  consummation  of  human  history, 
speedily  became  their  fixed  conviction.  This  persuasion, 
however,  did  not  fit  in  with  the  established  program  of  the 
"  last  days  "  and  encountered  the  strongest  resistance  from 
minds  unsoftened  by  the  personal  impression  of  the  great 
Teacher's  life.  No  apocalyptic  dream,  no  writing  accepted 
as  a  divination,  had  ever  presented  Messiah,  except  as 
invested  from  the  first  with  attributes  of  splendour,  and 
functions  of  power.  To  other  men  of  God,  to  prophets  who 
foretold  him,  and  warned  the  people  to  repent  betimes, 
suffering  and  ignominy  might  attach,  and  even  martyrdom  be 
assigned  ;  but  that  the  last  elect  of  God,  the  representative 
and  assertor  of  the  divine  sovereignty  over  men,  should 
utterly  fail,  and  die  in  shame,  w^as  i  owhere  written,  and  was 
incredible.  Here  was  the  first  ditfieulty  which  the  disciples 
had  to  encounter,  no  doubt  in  their  own  minds,  as  well  as 
among  their  compatriots :  it  was  necessary  to  recast  the 
Messianic  theory,  and  find  room  within  it  for  the  stage  of 
humiliation  prior  to  the  period  of  triumph  ;  and,  for  that 
purpose,  to  read  again,  with  more  discerning  eyes,  through 
the  lines,  and  between  the  lines,  of  the  old  prophets  and  seers. 
To  an  uncritical  people,  with  whom  historical  poems  have 
come  to  stand  for  oracles,  all  literary  interpretation  is  in  fluid 
condition,  and  will  take  any  direction  ;  and  passages  were 
soon  found  which  held  the  preconceived  thought,  and  spoke  in 
the  desired  tone.  Who  was  that  "  servant  of  Jehovah"  that 
was  "  despised  and  rejected  of  men,  a  man  of  sorrows,  and 
acquainted  with  grief,"  who  was  "led  as  a  sheep  to  the 
slaughter,  and  as  a  sheep  before  her  shearers  is  dumb,  so  he 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  255 

opened  not  his  mouth  "  '?*  Is  there  not  proof  here  "  that  the 
Christ  ought  to  have  suffered  these  things,  and  only  thus  to 
enter  his  glory  "  '?t  And,  if  thus  it  ^Yas  appointed  and  fore- 
told, that  lowly  lot,  that  gentle  humanity,  that  inward  conflict 
in  the  garden,  that  outer  agony  upon  the  cross,  are  no 
contradiction,  but  rather  the  very  sign  of  his  Messiahship. 
Far  from  constituting  failure  and  defeat,  they  were  all  entered 
on  the  providential  plan,  and  all,  under  the  guise  of  necessity, 
voluntarily  contemplated  and  assumed  ;  and  though  his  dis- 
ciples did  not  see  it  at  the  time,  do  they  not  remember  now 
the  forebodings  that  fell  from  him  in  his  dark  pathetic  moods, 
and  penetrate  their  mysterious  meaning  '?  This  state  of  mind, 
it  is  probable,  long  controlled  the  formation  of  the  earliest 
Christian  traditions,  and  modified  what  was  purely  historical 
in  their  groundwork  ;  and  in  the  same  interest  were  the 
materials  thus  constituted  subsequently  combined  into  the 
several  selections  presented  in  the  synoptical  Gospels.  They 
recite  such  portions  of  his  teaching  and  labours  as  have 
reference  to  the  "  coming  of  the  kingdom  :  "  they  mark  the 
crises  and  the  hints  which  seem  to  let  out  the  secret  of  his 
own  appointment,  and  to  show,  that,  in  what  he  suffered,  he 
purposely  assumed  the  will  of  God  :  they  regard  his  whole 
ministry  as  a  preamble  or  presage,  relating  to  the  impending 
real  Messiahship,  as  the  Baptist's  mission  to  his  own  career 
in  Palestine,  and  are  less  anxious  to  make  it  shine  with  the 
light  of  history  than  with  that  of  prophecy.  The  third  Gospel 
has  other  subsidiary  characteristics  ;  but  the  thesis  so  intently 
dwelt  upon  in  its  last  chapter — that  the  future  Christ  was 
meant  to  be  a  sufferer  first,  and  that  the  tragic  scene  on 
Calvary  is  but  an  act  of  the  divine  drama — is  the  expression 
of  its  deepest  thought.  It  would  harmonize  the  cross  with 
the  theory  of  Christ's  function. 

To  work  out  this  doctrine,  of  a  Messiah  emerging  through 
the  l)aptism  of  suffering  and  death,  was  the  first  achievement 
of  early  Christian  thought.  In  order  to  give  it  its  hoped-for 
success,  Jesus  should  have  early  fulfilled  the  promise  made  on 
his  behalf,  and  returned  from  heaven  with  his  full  investiture 
of  power.  This,  certainly,  was  the  disciples'  expectation : 
*  Isa.  liii.  3-7.  f  Luke  xxiv.  2G. 


256  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  fl. 

this,    the    purport    of    their    preaching ;    this,    the   needful 
justification  of  the  theor}^  they  had  formed.     A  notice  sent 
that  the  last  days  ^Yere  at  hand,   the  appearance  of  a  herald 
to  make  ready  for  them,  the  nomination  of  the  person  who  is 
to  introduce  them,  are  measures  full  of  meaning,  if  addressed 
to  those  upon  whom  also  the  sequel  quickly  comes,  but  lose  all 
fitness  and  significance,  if  the  warning  is  given  to  one  gener- 
ation, and  the  fulfilment  falls  upon  another,  and  the  eager 
haste  which  has  been  urged  is  proved  by  death  to  have  been 
superfluous,  and  has  to  be  handed  on  to  the  next  age.     Hence 
a  new  difficulty  gathered  with  lapsing  years  around  the  early 
Christians.     They  were  not  prepared  for  an  indefinite  post- 
ponement of  the  advent ;  and  their  first  doctrine  had  no  place 
for  it.     It  was  necessary  to   revise  their  construction  of  the 
providential  scheme,  and  find  some  worthy  design  to  fill  the 
intermediate  time  which  they  had  so  much  under-estimated  ; 
and  to  this  second  problem  it  is  that  the   post-evangelical 
literature,  represented  by  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  specifically 
addresses   itself.     The    solution   is   gained   by   setting    up  a 
second   stage   of  divine   preparation   for   the   great    end,    a 
dispensation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  shall  take  the  place,  for 
a  generation,  of  the  immediate  presence  of  Jesus,  now  with- 
drawn.    To  his  i^ersonal  preliminary  visit  is  to  be  added  a 
social    proclamation    of    the   coming   kingdom   through   the 
constitution  of  a  witnessing  church,  organized,  not,   indeed, 
for  permanent  history,  but  for  provisional  protest  till  the  hour 
strike.     As  the  body  of  Christian  believers  gradually  increased 
and  ramified,  and  absorbed  into  itself  both  Jewish  and  Gentile 
elements,  and,  settling  down  into  regular  usages  of  its  own, 
found  itself  isolated  from  society  around,  this  was  the  interpre- 
tation which  it  naturally  put  upon  its  own  life  and  meaning  : 
it   stood   there  as  representative  of  the  absent  and  waiting 
Christ,  to  prolong  his  night  of  warning,  and  "  show  forth  his 
death  till  he  come."     As  the  Church  became  a  fact  of  larger 
dimensions   and   more   various   elements,    this   theory   of  it 
hastened  to  overtake  it,   and  shaped  itself  into  a  connected 
system,  which  found  a  place  for  all  the  parts.     The  apostolic 
age  was  thus  set  up  as  furnishing  a  second  volume  in  the 
divine   history,   parallel   to   the   first,    and   by    new    agency 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  257 

doubling  its  warning  to  the  world.  It  opens,  like  tlie  first, 
with  visits  of  angels,  announcing,  not  now  the  earthly,  but 
the  heavenly  nativity  of  Christ.*  It  starts  its  new  mission, 
like  that  of  Jesus  on  Jordan,  with  a  sj^iritual  baptism,  no 
longer,  however,  of  water,  but  of  fire,t  and  then,  simply 
substituting  the  apostles  and  evangelists  for  the  Master, 
conducts  them  through  a  similar  career,  of  preaching,  of 
miracles,  of  exorcism,  of  bestowment  of  spiritual  gifts,  of 
Ijersecution,  transfiguration,  and  martyrdom.  In  the  Book 
of  Acts  we  stand  in  presence  throughout  of  a  theory  of  the 
apostolic  age,  under  the  influence  of  which  the  recorded  facts 
and  words  are  selected,  moulded,  and  balanced ;  and  this 
feature  alone,  apart  from  all  questions  aftecting  its  truth  in 
detail,  throws  light  upon  its  date.  For  no  generation  as  it 
lives  on,  least  of  all  a  generation  plunged  in  hot  conflict  and 
intense  anticipations,  has  time,  and  sufficient  distance  from 
itself,  to  speculate  upon  its  own  position  in  the  system  of  the 
world ;  and  ere  it  can  all  lie  in  symmetrical  order  before  the 
eye,  and  be  exhibited  as  part  of  an  intended  plan,  foreshadowed 
in  the  past,  and  needful  for  a  future  long  decreed,  it  must 
already  be  well  over,  and  seen  in  retiring  perspective  by  the 
observer.  The  work,  therefore,  is  certainly  post-apostolic.  It 
deals  with  a  later  stadium  of  the  Messianic  theory  than  that 
on  which  the  Gospel  pauses,  and  addresses  itself  to  an 
ulterior  state  of  mind.  It  is  o])liged  to  throw  the  Parusia 
more  into  the  indefinite,  and  let  it  rest  in  comparative  silence. 
And  its  representation  of  Christian  affairs  approaches  visibly 
nearer  the  settled  existence  of  a  society  no  longer  provisional, 
but  rapidly  passing  into  the  Catholic  Church  of  history. 
These  features  would  not  naturally  make  their  appearance  in 
the  first  century.  And  the  favourable  feeling  everywhere 
shown  towards  the  Eoman  Government  would  l)e  most  in 
place,  notwithstanding  some  partial  persecutions,  in  the  reign 
of  Trajan.  In  the  latter  part  of  that  reign  (wliirh  extended 
from  A.I).  98  to  a.d.  118),  at  an  interval  of,  perhaps,  ten 
years,  the  author  may  probably  have  comi)iled  his  two 
works.  Accuracy,  however,  is  here  certainly  unattainable  ;  and 
definite  dates  are  admissil)le  only  as  approximations,  which, 

"  Acts  i.  10,  11.  t  ii-  1-13. 

s 


258  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

till  corrected  by  further  evidence,  may  serve  in  aid  of  clear 
conceptions. 


B.  Hclation  to  PmiVs  Epistles. 

Laying  do^vn  the  third  Gospel,  let  us  now  take  up  the 
Pauline  letters  as  our  second  term  of  comparison  for  the  Book 
of  Acts.  In  order  to  appreciate  their  relation  and  points  of 
contact,  we  must  take  a  rapid  glance  at  the  historian's  scheme, 
and  the  disposition  of  its  contents. 

The  story  which  he  tells  arranges  itself  around  two  great 
figures,  presented  in  succession, — that  of  Peter,  so  long  as 
Jerusalem  is  the  centre  of  his  scene  ;*  that  of  Paul,  from  the 
moment  when  it  widens  into  foreign  parts  :t  and  so  nearly 
complete  is  the  separation  of  their  action,  that  only  once  does 
each  apostle  appear  in  the  section  devoted  to  the  other.  I  The 
founding  of  the  parent  Church  at  Jerusalem,  after  the  college  of 
apostles  has  been  filled  up,§  opening  at  Pentecost  with  the 
descent  of  the  Spirit  and  the  gift  of  tongues,  i|  so  effectually 
turned  to  account  by  Peter's  exposition  as  to  bring  in  three 
thousand  converts, IT  is  confirmed  by  a  miraculous  cure  of  a 
cripple  in  the  temple,**  by  a  vain  attempt  to  restrain  the 
apostles  through  imprisonment,  f  \  and  by  further  addresses  of 
Peter  to  the  people,  converting  five  thousand  more,!];  and  to 
the  council,  §§  and  culminates  in  a  life  of  enthusiastic  brother- 
hood, carried  even  to  community  of  goods,  ||||  visiting  reserva- 
tions of  private  interest  with  instant  supernatural  death,  ^^and 
glorified  by  such  signs  and  wonders,  that  crowds  from  neigh- 
bouring cities  competed  for  the  passing  shadow  of  Peter  upon 
their  sick.***  But  this  human  society,  thus  far  distinguished 
from  orthodox  Judaism  only  by  its  belief  that  Messiah  has 
been  nominated,  soon  outgrows  its  first  compactness,  and 
carries  within  it  elements  at  once  of  division  and  of  expansion. 
Greek-speaking  colonists    and  foreign   proselytes  are  there, 

*  Acts  i.-xii.  inclusive.  f  xiii.  1,  to  end. 

i  Saul  in  viii.  1-3,  ix.  1-30,  passages  which  practically  form  one  subject ; 
Peter  in  xv.  7-11.  §  i.  15-26. 

II  ii.  1-13.  ^  ii.  14-41.  **  iii.  1-11.  ■ 

tt  iv.  1-3,  17-22.  tX  iv.  4.  §§  iv.  8-12. 

nil  iv.  31-37.  *i%  V.  1-11.  ***  V.  12-16. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTA.\'TS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  259 

who  have  been  held  or  (Tra\Mi  to  Judaism,  not  by  its  temple 
cultus  and  its  Levitical  law,  but  by  its  pure  theism  and  its 
ideal  hopes ;  and  they  bear  with  impatience  the  legal  rigour 
of  the  twelve,  and  the  preference  shown  towards  the  disciples 
who  are  natives  of  Palestine.  The  outburst  of  their  feelings 
represented  by  Stephen,  with  its  consequences  on  the  interior 
spirit  and  outward  relations  of  the  Church,  forms  the  subject 
cf  our  author's  next  section.  To  allay  the  complaint  of  the 
Hellenists,  the  poor's  fund  is  handed  over  to  seven  of  their 
number,  appointed,  however,  only  as  secondaries,  by  the  lay- 
ing-on  of  the  apostles'  hands.*  But  this  vantage-ground  of 
recognition  gives  scope  enough  for  the  fervour  of  Stephen  to 
break  forth  in  that  daring  speech  of  his  which  spiritualizes 
the  history  and  law  of  Israel,  disapproves  the  temple,  rebukes 
the  national  blindness,  and  brings  down  martyrdom  upon 
himself. t  While  this  first  explosion  of  revolt  against  Jewish 
hardness  and  exclusiveness  sprang  from  within  the  parent 
Church  itself,  Saul,  its  future  representative,  steps  upon  the 
scene  as  the  agent  of  sacerdotal  resistance  to  it.t  By  that 
fierce  resistance,  the  disciples,  especially  the  Hellenists  (for 
the  apostles  seem  to  have  been  safe  enough  at  Jerusalem), 
were  scattered  over  Palestine, §  and,  far  from  limiting  them- 
selves to  the  synagogue,  made  Christians  of  Samaritans,  1| 
baptized  Simon  Magus  himself, H  and  the  treasurer  of  the 
Ethiopian  queen.**  Not  that  these  cases  were  without  some 
affinities  with  Judaism.  Its  separation  from  Samaria  was 
somewhat  of  a  domestic  quarrel ;  the  treasurer  was  at  least  a 
proselyte,  for  he  had  been  to  the  temple  to  worship  :  but  they 
>vere  at  one  remove  from  the  close  circle  of  Jerusalem,  and 
formed  an  intermediate  link  between  the  first  narrowness  and 
the  last  universalit3^  Accordingly,  the  way  being  thus  pre- 
pared, our  author's  next  section  unfolds  the  provision  for 
advancing  on  the  Gentile  world.  First,  Saul  is  converted  by 
the  mid-day  miracle  on  the  Damascus  road  ;t|-  the  secret  of 
his  mission  being  confided,  not  to  himself,  but  to  the  disciple 
w]io  was  to  receive  him,  and  cure  his  three-days'  blindness  at 


!*  Acts  vi.  1-8. 

t  vi.  9-vii. 

GO. 

.1      t  viii   1-3. 

§  viii.  1-1. 

11  viii.  5-8. 

•[  viii.  9-24. 

**  viii.  27-10. 

tt  ix.  1-9. 

•    1 

... 

s  2 


26o  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Damascus,*  and  taking  at  first  no  practical  effect ;  for  botli 
there!  and  at  Jerusalem,  where  Barnabas  immediately  intro- 
duces him  to  the  mistrustful  apostles,  he  preaches  his  new 
convictions  only  in  synagogues,  ]:  and  comes  into  conflict, 
like  any  other  Jewish  Christian,  only  with  Hellenists  and 
Jews.§  The  historian,  therefore,  is  here  simply  providing 
this  conversion  for  further  use  :  for  the  present,  he  sets  it 
aside,  ere  a  single  Gentile  had  been  addressed,  and,  reverting 
to  Peter,  invests  him  with  a  direct  divine  commission  to  bring 
the  first  heathen  into  the  faith  and  brotherhood  of  the  bap- 
tized, [i  and  attributes  to  him  the  very  motto  of  Christian 
universality,  that  "God  is  no  respecter  of  persons;  but  in 
every  nation  he  that  feareth  him,  and  worketh  righteousness, 
is  accepted  with  him."^  As  if  eager  to  mark  with  an  excep- 
tional sanction  the  conversion  of  Cornelius's  household,  the 
Holy  Spirit  does  not  wait,  as  usual,  for  their  due  baptism,  but 
ere  Peter  was  silent,  fell  upon  them  with  the  gift  of  tongues  ;** 
asking  for  their  baptism,  instead  of  crowning  it.  Does  the 
author,  then,  mean  to  dispossess  Paul  of  any  concern  with 
the  first  life  of  Gentile  Christianity?  Not  quite  so.  He  tells 
us  that  some  Cypriots  and  Cyrenians  among  the  disciples 
dispersed  by  Stephen's  death  had,  of  their  own  accord,  though 
primarily  addressing  Jews,  turned  their  preaching  to  the 
heathen,  and  gathered  a  great  harvest  of  converts,  chiefly  at 
Antioch.ft  To  report  upon  this  first  experiment  of  a  mixed 
church,  Barnabas  went  down  as  commissioner  of  the  Jerusalem 
apostles  ;  and,  accepting  the  good  results  as  a  sufficient  seal 
of  divine  approval,  he  fetched  Saul  from  Tarsus  to  work  with 
him  for  a  year  in  organizing  a  community  so  encouraging, 
yet  so  precariously  balanced.  1 1  Paul  has  thus  a  hand  in  the 
earliest  Gentile  work,  but  by  human  invitation,  not  divine 
commission ;  by  authority  from  Jerusalem,  not  in  his  own 
right ;  and  in  garnering  the  harvest  raised  by  others,  not  in 
sowing  the  seed  himself.  During  this  year,  at  Antioch,  a 
dei^utation  of  prophets  from  the  parent  Church  came  thither 
to  announce  a  famine  impending  at  some  future  date,  and  to 


*  Acts  ix.  10-18. 

t  ix.  20. 

+  ix.  26-29. 

§  ix.  22-29. 

II  X.  1-33. 

«[  x.  34,  35. 

**  X.  44-48. 

tt  xi.  19-21. 

XX  xi.  22-26. 

Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND   THE  SCRIPTURES.         261 

seek  help  for  the  evil  times  ;  and,  a  collection  having  been 
made,  Saul,  in  company  with  his  patron  Barnabas,  visits 
Jerusalem  to  deliver  it  into  the  elders'  hands.*  He  thus 
appears  in  a  position  thoroughly  recognized  at  headquarters, 
but  wholly  subordinate ;  and,  for  the  second  time  since  his 
conversion,  is  thrown  into  intimate  and  friendly  relations  with 
the  original  apostles.  Before  conducting  the  bearers  of  the 
collection  back  to  Antioch,  the  historian,  casting  a  last  glance 
upon  the  revered  Church  at  Jerusalem,  relates  the  particulars 
of  Herod  Agrippa's  persecution  and  subsequent  death,  the 
beheading  of  James  the  son  of  Zebedee,!  the  rigorous  impris- 
onment of  Peter,  his  deliverance  by  an  angel  through  spon- 
taneously opening  doors,  and  his  reappearance  among  the 
astonished  friends  to  whom  he  was  given  back.t  Whether 
among  them  we  are  to  look  for  Barnabas  and  Paul,  we  are  not 
told  ;  but  from  the  house  where  the  gathering  was  held,  they 
took  John  Mark  (who  lived  there  with  his  mother)  to  help  in 
their  labours  in  and  beyond  Antioch. § 

With  this  episode  the  narrative  bids  adieu  to  the  parent 
Church  and  its  representative  apostles,  and,  taking  up  its 
second  thread,  follows  the  movements  of  Paul  till  he  is  brought 
to  Piome.  On  looking  back  over  this  section  of  the  history, 
we  notice  a  gradually  changing  attitude  of  public  feeling  in 
the  city  towards  the  Christians.  At  first  their  cause  is  de- 
scribed as  popular ;  and  its  active  opponents  are  found  only 
among  the  aristocratic  Sadducees  and  chiefs  of  the  state.  1| 
When  Stephen  and  the  Hellenists  step  to  the  front,  the  favour 
of  the  citizens  falls  away  ;1l  and  at  last  the  local  king  finds 
no  more  persuasive  means  of  courting  the  people  than  by 
lifting  his  sword  against  James,  and  closing  his  prison-doors 
upon  Peter  ;**  so  that  the  perverseness  is  universal  which 
turns  away  from  the  divine  light  in  the  midst  of  them.  Hence 
the  way  is  now  fully  prepared  for  the  quest  of  new  fields  and 
the  introduction  of  the  new  Agent,  who,  if  his  countrymen 
reject  his  message,  will  obtain  a  hearing  for  it  among  the 
Gentiles. 


*  Acts  xi.  27-30. 

t  xii.  1,  2. 

t  xii.  3-17. 

§  xii.  12-25. 

II  iii.,  iv.,  V. 

^  vi.,  vii. 

•*  xii.  2,  3. 

262  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  1 1. 

As  Paul's  conversion  had,   according  to  our  author,   con- 
veyed to  him  no  commission,  he  has  yet  to  receive  the  author- 
it}'  which  shall  start  him  on  his  special  career.     With  this, 
accordingly,  the  section  devoted  to  him  begins.     From  whom, 
then,  does  he  obtain  it  ?     A  body  of  prophets  and  teachers  in 
the  Antioch  congregation,  engaged  in  fasting  and  prayer,  are 
divinely  impelled,  as  they  believe,  to  set  apart  Barnabas  and 
Paul  for  a  missionary  enterprise  ;  and,  in  obedience  to  this 
nomination,  the  two  friends  are  consecrated  by  the  laying-on 
of  hands,  and  sent  forth  to  their   work.*      Drawn  first  to 
Cyprus,  as  the  native  place  of  Barnabas,  they  passed  through 
the  island,  from  east  to  west,  with  Mark  as  their  associate, 
but  without  recorded  result,  till,  at  Paphos,  Paul,  encounter- 
ing Elymas  the  sorcerer,  strikes  him  miraculously  blind,  and 
converts  the  proconsul,  Sergius  Paulus.f     From  this  critical 
moment,   Barnabas,   hitherto  the  patron,  is  withdrawn  into 
the   secondary   place ;    and  the   growing   importance  of   the 
heathen  mission  induces  a  change  of  the  Hebrew  name  Saul, 
to  the  more  current  Pioman  form  of  Paul.  1     On  their  crossing 
over  to  the  opposite   mainland,  Mark,   to  the  displeasure  of 
Paul,  returned  to  Jerusalem. §     The  other  two  advanced  into 
the   interior,    through   the   Pisidian  and   Lycaonian   towns ; 
always,    it   is   affirmed,   proceeding   by    the    same   rule, — of 
preaching  first  in  the  synagogue,  and  usually  with  the  same 
result, — of  incurring   the   hostility   of  the   Jews,   and   being 
driven  to  seek  a  heathen  audience,  and  form  an  independent 
eommunity.il     Wherever  they  went,  their  steps  were  marked 
by    supernatural   signs  ;1i     and   the  healing    of  a  cripple  at 
Lystra  induced,  it  is  said,  that  monstrous  scene  in  which  the 
missionari-es    were   first  worshipped   as   gods,  and   then,  on 
Jewish  instigation,  stoned  and  expelled.**  Keturning  on  their 
steps,  they  rendered  account  at  Antioch  of  the  execution  of 
their  commission,  and,  resuming  their  residence  there,  are  lost 
sight  of  for  several  years.     When  we  consider  that  their  first 
journey  occupied  about  two  years,  we  cannot  but  be  struck 
with  the  scantiness  of  the  historian's  record.     It  gives  us  one 

*  Acts  xiii.  1-3.  f  xiii.  4-12.  •         %  xiii.  9. 

§  xui.  13  ;  XV.  36-39.  ||  xiii.  14, 15,  44-52.  -^i  xiv.  3. 

**  xiv.  8-19. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  A\D    THE   SCRIPTURES.  263 

speech  of  Paul  in  the  synagogue,  one  personal  conversion  by 
a  miracle  of  terror,  one  dramatic  outburst  of  superstition, 
brought  on  by  a  miracle  of  mercy,  but  else,  only  the  most 
general  statements  of  method  and  result ;  that  the  first 
chance  was  always  given  to  the  synagogue  ;  that  the  Jews 
were  perverse  and  rancorous ;  that  the  Gentiles  asked  to 
hear  the  word.  The  heathen  mission  is  everywhere  exhibited 
not  as  within  the  primary  intention  of  the  preachers,  but  as 
an  incidental  consequence  forced  upon  them,  and  justified  by 
the  infatuation  of  the  men  of  Israel. 

Their  proceedings,  however,  though  ratified  by  their  con- 
stituents at  Antioch,  were  called  in  question  by  a  party  in  the 
parent  Church ;  and  messengers  came  down  from  Jerusalem 
to  insist  that  no  Gentile  should  be  baptized,  unless  he  sub- 
mitted himself  to  the  entire  Jewish  law.*     If  this  were  to  be 
the  rule,  the  whole  work  of  the  late  mission  was  invalid ; 
and  Barnabas  and  Paul,  thus  challenged,  determined  to  seek 
at  headquarters    the   legitimation    which    the    complainants 
threatened  to  withhold  from  them.t     Taking  a  deputation  to 
Jerusalem,  they  submitted  the  question,   with  the  narrative 
of  their  labours,  to  a  meeting  of  the  apostles  and  elders,  t 
curiously  characterized  by  great  breadth  of  speech,  dwindling 
into   narrowness   of    result.      Peter,    appealing   to   his  own 
initiative  in  the  case  of  Cornelius,  unreservedly  declares  that 
the  intolerable  voke  of  the  law  is  broken,  and  there  is  no  differ- 
ence  before  God  between  the  Gentile  and  the  Jew,§     And  even 
James   supports   the    same   thesis,  out   of  the   prophets,  yet 
induces    the   assembly  to   lay  four  restrictions    on    heathen 
converts, — abstinence  from  meats  that  were  the  remains  of 
Pagan  sacrifices,  and  from  such  as  had  tlie  l)l()od   in  tliem, 
and  from  the  liesh  of  animals  snared  or  strangled,  and  from 
marriage   within  the   prohibited    degrees,    and    from   other 
irregularities  of  the  same  class.;]     This  decision   is    said    to 
have  been  accepted  by  Paul  and  Barnabas,  conveyed  by  letter, 
and  authenticated  by  deputation,  to  the  Church  at  Antioch," 
and  established  as  the  basis  of  common  action   among  all 
sections  of  Christian  believers.*: 


*  Acts  XV.  1. 

•      t  XV.  2,  3. 

"  t  XV.  4-6. 

§  XV.  7-11. 

•  -     11  XV.  13-20. 

IF  XV.  22-31 

264  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Armed,  now,  with  a  full  recognition,  not,  indeed,  as  apostle, 
but  as  missionary,  Paul  is  sent  by  the  historian  on  his  second 
and  greatest  journey,  which  is  to  establish  his  character  as 
chief  founder  of  the  Gentile  churches.  Here,  too,  Barnabas 
drops  away,  offended  with  his  colleague's  displeasure  with 
Mark,*  and  disappears  from  the  story ;  and  Paul,  emerging 
into  complete  independence,  and  taking  Silas,  and  soon, 
Timothy,  as  assistants,  begins  upon  his  old  track,  leaving 
with  every  church  the  rules  adopted  by  the  apostolic  assembly 
at  Jerusalem. t  In  his  own  conduct  he  is  said  to  have  even 
gone  beyond  their  restrictive  requirements,  compelling 
Timothy,  who  had  a  Jewish  mother  and  a  Greek  father,  to 
submit  to  the  Jewish  rite  before  entering  the  Christian 
service.  I  The  historian  hurries  the  travellers  through 
Phrygia  and  Galatia,§  without  mention  of  any  of  the 
important  churches, — Colossae,  Laodicea,  Hierapolis, — which 
so  soon  became  yenowned,  and  barring  them  by  divine 
prohibition  from  proconsular  Asia  on  the  south-west,  and 
Bithynia  on  the  north,  brings  them  rapidly  to  Troas,||  the 
verge  of  that  European  enterprise  which  he  is  eager  to 
describe.  First  pausing  at  Philij)pi,  he  tells  of  the  pious  and 
hospitable  Lydia,  with  whom  the  missionaries  were  guests  ;1l 
of  the  soothsaying  girl,  whose  master,  provoked  by  Paul's 
successful  exorcism,  had  him  and  Silas  beaten  and  im- 
prisoned ;**  of  the  miraculous  deliverance  from  jail,  and 
conversion  of  the  jailer  ;tt  but  does  not  explain  how  it  was 
that  the  plea  of  Pioman  citizenship,  which  would  have  pro- 
tected them  from  stripes,  was  not  urged  till  after  the 
punishment  had  been  inflicted,  tt  Three  weeks  at  Thessa- 
lonica  serve  only  to  show  how  at  once  the  Jews  are  rendered 
inveterate,  and  the  "  devout  Greeks  "  are  profoundly  attracted, 
by  the  Christian  message. §§  Driven  forward  by  the  hatred  of 
their  countrymen,  the  travellers  are  at  last  at  Athens,  ||||  the 
culminating  point  of  the  historian's  interest,  for  which  he  has 
reserved  the  speech^ H  characteristic  of  this  section.     The  city 

*  Acts  XV.  36-40.  t  XV.  41-xvi.  5.  %  xvi.  3. 

§  xvi.  6.  II  xvi.  7,  8.  t  xvi.  12-15. 

""*  xvi.  16-24.  tt  xvi.  25-34.  tX-  xvi.  37-39. 

§§  xvii.  1-9.  nil  xvii.  10-15.  ^\*i  xvii,  22-31. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.         265 

of  the  schools  was  not  a  place  congenial  to  the  Christian 
gospel  ;*  and,  forming  no  church  there,  Paul  passed  on  to 
Corinth,  and  spending  a  year  and  a  half  there,  under  the 
friendly  roof  of  Aquila  and  Priscilla,f  he  met  with  the 
usual  experience, — enmity  and  persecution  from  orthodox 
Judaism,  t  indifference  or  protection  from  the  Pioman 
authorities,  §  and  a  large  following  among  the  religious 
Gentiles  and  Jewish  proselytes,  j]  Here  was  the  limit  of  his 
second  mission.  "Wishing  to  show  himself  once  more  at 
Jerusalem  as  a  faithful  observer  of  the  law,  he  put  himself 
under  a  vow,  which  begins  its  effect  in  Greece,  and  completes 
it  in  the  temple ;  and,  calling  at  Ephesus  and  Caesarea, 
reports  himself  to  the  parent  Church,  and  thence  returns  to 
Antioch.'^ 

The  third  missionary  journey  assumes  the  character  of  a 
passing  survey  of  the  previous  work ;  and  it  follows  so  much 
the  lines  already  traced,  through  Galatia  and  Phrygia,**  to 
the  coast  of  Asia  Proper,  and  by  Troas  to  Macedonia  and 
Achaia,  followed  by  a  return  but  little  varied,  that  scarcely 
would  new  ground  be  broken  at  all,  were  it  not  for  a  stay  of 
more  than  two  yearstt  at  Ephesus.  Here  the  author  gives  a 
sample  of  Paul's  encounter  with  three  influences  menacing  to 
his  work,n — the  imperfect  gospel  of  Apollos  and  his  friends, 
who  are  preaching  the  promissory  message  of  John  the  Baptist 
(that  Messiah  is  at  hand),  but  have  yet  to  be  brought  up  to 
the  baptism  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  and  to  receive  the  gift  of 
the  Spirit  ;§§  the  impenetrable  Jewish  conservatism  ;!]  |1  the 
interests  and  passions  of  Pagan  superstition.  The  representa- 
tives of  the  first,  recognized  already  as  "  disciples,"  need  only 
further  instruction ;  and  the  laying-on  of  Paul's  hands  after 
baptism,  followed  by  the  gift  of  tongues,  at  once  declares  their 
enrolment  complete.mi  The  second  shows  itself  not  only  in 
the  hardened  opposition  in  the  synagogue,  which,  after  three 
months,  drove  Paul  to  remove  to  the  school  of  Tyrannus,*** 
but  in  the  attempt  of  the  Jewish  exorcists  to  trade  in  the  name 

*  Acts  xvii.  31.  t  xviii.  1-3.  *  xviii.  5,  G,  12,  13. 

§  xviii.  14-17.  II  xviii.  7-11.  ^  xviii.  18-22. 

*•  xviii.  23.  tt  xix.  10.  %%  xviii.  24-xix.  3. 

§§  xix.  4-7.  II II  xix.  8,  9.  tU  xix.  4-7. 
»♦*  xix.  8,  9. 


266  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

of  Jesus  as  a  spell  of  power  in  their  art.  The  possessing  demon, 
however,  being  up  to  this  device,  declines  to  stir,  and  goads  on 
his  victim  to  beat  the  impostors,  and  turn  them  out  of  doors.* 
The  third  find  voice  in  the  outcry  of  the  craftsmen,  and  the 
worshippers  at  Diana's  shrine  ;t  and  being  not  properly  en- 
countered by  the  Christian  missionaries  at  all,  but  turned 
aside  by  an  adroit  and  tolerant  city  officer,  are  adduced,  appar- 
ently, only  in  proof  of  the  public  alarm  at  the  spread  of  the 
new  religion.  It  is,  doubtless,  with  a  view  to  leave  the  same 
impression  of  growing  popular  success,  that  the  historian  cites 
the  "  special  miracles  "  wrought  not  only  by  "the  hands  of 
Paul,"  but  by  "  handkerchiefs  and  aprons  brought  from  his 
body  to  the  sick  or  the  possessed,"  and.  the  voluntary  burning, 
by  converted  and  repentant  sorcerers,  of  their  books  of  divina- 
tion, to  the  value  of  above  two  thousand  pounds. 

It  was  between  Troas  and  Philippi,  in  the  second  journey, 
that  our  author  first  availed  himself  of  the  Pauline  itinerary, 
which  he  often  quotes  ;J  and  it  is  on  the  return  from  Philippi 
to  Troas,  in  the  third  journey,  that  he  resorts  to  it  again. § 
With  the  dry  memoranda  of  this  journal  are  interspersed 
passages  more  fully  descriptive,  which  betray  themselves  by 
the  historian's  pervading  feeling  that  Paul  is  on  his  last 
circuit  in  the  East,  and  is  taking  leave  of  the  disciples, 
whom  he  gathers  round  him.  This  it  is  which  explains  the 
lingering  of  his  address  at  Troas,  till  Eutychus  has  fallen 
asleep,  and  given  occasion  to  the  miracle  answering  to  Peter's 
recall  of  Tabitha  from  death. I]  This  it  is  which  gives  its 
pathetic  character  to  the  speech  before  the  Ephesian  elders  at 
Miletus.^  And  this  it  is  which  introduces  the  prophecy  at 
Tyre  and  Cfesarea,  of  Paul's  seizure  at  Jerusalem,**  although 
the  author  has  here  concealed  his  hand  by  interweaving  his 
additions  v/ith  his  materials,  and  adopting  the  borrowed  form 
for  the  whole.  It  is  natural  for  the  writer,  who  knows  his 
own  drama  to  the  end,  to  give  impressiveness  to  this  last  visit 
to  Jerusalem,  by  auguries  of  calamit}^  growing  louder  as  the 

*  Acts  xix.  13-17.  t  xix.  23-41.  .  J  xvi.  10-17. 

§  XX.  ':-15.  II  XX.  7-12.  ly.  XX.  18-38. 

**  xxi.  4,  8-14.     M.  Eenan  perceives  that  xxi.  8,  is  no  par-t  of  the  journal, 
and  treats  it  as  an  interpolation. — Antichrist,  p.  5G4.       •  -  . 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS   AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.         267 

city  is  approached.  But  it  is  not  natural  that  Paul,  wlioin  a 
heavenly  intimation  so  easily  turned  aside  from  Bithynia  and 
the  province  of  Asia,  should  now,  in  defiance  of  emphatic 
warnings  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  persist  in  taking  the  road  to 
bondage  or  death. 

The  last  section  of  our  book  presents  the  apostle  in  a  new 
character,  not  of  aggressive  action,  but  of  endurance  and 
defence.  It  conducts  him  from  Jerusalem  to  Eome, — the 
persecuted,  the  accused,  the  prisoner  on  appeal.  His  mis- 
sionary life  is  over  ;  and  when  he  speaks,  whether  to  his 
countrymen  from  the  steps  of  Fort  Antonia,  or  before  the 
council,  or  to  the  court  at  Cffisarea,  his  addresses,  though 
telling  the  story  of  his  religious  change,  are  rather  forensic 
than  prophetic.  Finding  himself  still  an  object  of  suspicion 
among  the  Judaic  Christians  of  the  Holy  City,  he  is  described 
as  taking  on  himself,  with  four  zealots  for  the  law,  the  obliga- 
tions and  charges  of  a  conspicuous  vow,  that  he  may  seem  no 
less  loyal  to  Moses  than  they.*  Whatever  soothing  effect  this 
might  have  upon  the  Church,  it  did  not  avail  with  the  uncon- 
verted Jews.  On  the  rumour  that  he  had  brought  a  Gentile 
within  the  interior  temple  courts,  a  riot  is  rais;ed  among  the 
worshippers,  from  which  he  is  rescued  only  by  the  Eoman 
guard. t  Every  attempt  of  the  officer  in  command  to  obtain  a 
distinct  charge  against  the  prisoner,  which  shall  justity  his 
arrest,  is  frustrated  by  orthodox  vehemence.  Paul's  speech  to 
the  people,  immediately  after  his  apprehension,  is  silenced  by 
tumultuary  cries  the  moment  he  mentions  his  preaching  to 
the  Gentiles.;!:  His  own  examination  by  scourging  is  stopped 
by  his  claim  to  Pioman  citizenship.^  The  reference  of  his  case 
to  the  Sanhedrim  is  rendered  fruitless  by  the  outburst  of 
clamorous  dissensions.] j  And,  after  all,  he  is  sent  off  to  the 
Eoman  governor  at  Casarea,  without  any  definite  indictment 
against  him,  merely  to  place  him  beyond  the  reach  of  a  Jewish 
conspiracy  against  his  life.^  Summoned  before  Felix,  his 
accusers  can  bring  no  legal  charge,  but  only  try  to  make  him 
responsible  for  their  own  disturl)ance  in  the  temple.**     And 

■  •  Acts  x.\i.  20-27.  .  f  xxi.  28-40.-  t  xxii-  21,  22. 
§  xxii.  24-29.  ||  xxiii.  1-10.  If  xxiii.  12-35. 
*•  xxiv.  1-9.  ,v  "  ■■'•■   


-268  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

when,  after  two  years'  unintelligible  imprisonment,  his  case  is 
brought  up  for  hearing  before  Festus,  the  succeeding  governor, 
the  court,  though  aided  by  the  presence  of  Agrippa,  the  Jewish 
prince,  and  Berenice,  is  still  unable  to  draw  up  any  regular 
bill  against  him  ;*  and  he  is  sent  to  Eome,  not  to  answer  for 
any  alleged  offence,  but  merely  in  compliance  with  his  own 
appeal. t  In  all  his  speeches,  the  ground  of  his  defence  is 
remarkable.  He  pleads  his  full  Jewish  orthodoxy,  and  denies 
that  he  teaches  anything  which  is  not  covered  by  the  faith  of 
a  consistent  Pharisee.  J  And  in  two  of  them  he  repeats  the 
story  of  his  conversion,  with  circumstantial  variations  from 
the  historian's  account,  and  from  each  other,  which  indicate 
how  little  was  exactitude  regarded  in  even  the  most  important 
Christian  traditions. § 

The  voyage  to  Eome  is  evidently  drawn,  for  the  most  part, 
from  the  journal  of  an  eye-witness,  very  unevenly  kept ;  for 
while  the  earlier  portion  is  related  with  consecutive  explicit- 
ness,||  from  the  shipwreck  at  Malta  the  narrative  hastens  to 
its  end,  three  months  being  compressed  into  a  few  verses,^! 
and  marked  only  by  the  mention  of  four  days,  to  two  of  which 
miracles  are  referred.  Paul,  on  reaching  the  city  where  for 
two  years  he  was  to  live  as  a  prisoner  under  little  restriction, 
soon  sent  for  the  leading  Jews,  to  explain  what  brings  him 
there,  and  to  remove  any  prejudicial  rumour  that  might  have 
preceded  him,  and  is  assured  that  no  report  of  him  had 
reached  them,  and  he  had  no  evil  impression  to  fear.**  The 
way  being  thus  open,  he  devotes  a  day  with  them  to  the 
exposition  of  his  gospel;  and  as,  with  few  exceptions,  they 
withstand  his  persuasion,  he  denounces  their  blindness  in  the 
words  of  Isaiah,  and  tells  them  that  the  Gentiles  should  have 
what   they   had  refused. tt     The   author,    having   conducted 

*  Acts  XXV.  1-27.  +  xxvi.  30-32. 

X  xxiii.  1-6  ;  xxiv.  15-21 ;  xxv.  8 ;  xxvi.  4-7,  22. 

§  xxii.  6-21;  xxvi.  12-20.  In  ix.  7,  it  is  said  that  Paul's  companions 
"  heard  the  voice  "  ;  in  xxii.  9,  that  they  "  saw  the  light,  but  did  not  hear  the 
voice."  In  the  first  account,  the  commission  to  the  Gentiles  is  not  confided 
to  Paul,  though  mentioned  to  Ananias :  in  the  second,  it  is  given  to  Paul, 
not  in  the  Damascus  vision,  but  in  a  later  trance,  at  the  temple  :  in  the 
third,  it  forms  the  main  part  of  what  Jesus  says  to  him  at  his  conversion. 
II  xxvii.  "TI  xxviii.  1-10. 

**  sxviii.  17-21.  ft  xxviii.  22-28. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  269 

Paul  as  the  organ  of  conveyance  for  the  Gentile  gospel  from 
its  birthplace  to  the  centre  of  the  heathen  world,  has  reached 
the  goal  of  his  design,  and  leaves  him  at  the  climax  of  his 
mission,  though  possibly  descending  into  the  shadow  of 
personal  danger,  or  even  the  martyr's  death. 

The  picture  thus  drawn  of  Christian  affairs  in  the  apostolic 
3,ge  is  in  itself  distinct,  symmetrical,  and  fairly  consistent  ; 
and  it  represents,  no  doul)t,  the  conception  which  the  Church, 
when  its  first  contrarieties  had  been  levelled,  formed  of  its 
own  nativity.  Its  chief  features,  however,  we  can  fortunately 
compare  with  paragraphs  from  the  life,  handed  down  in  the 
epistles  of  Paul ;  and  they  will  reward  a  scrutiny. 

I.  The  spiritual  gifts  showered  down  upon  the  disciples  on 
the  day  of  Pentecost,  and  especially  that  "'  S2:)eaking  with 
tongues,"  which  is  described  as  usually  following  baptism 
and  the  laying-on  of  the  apostles'  hands,  are  the  subject  of  a 
special  discussion  between  Paul  and  his  Corinthian  converts  ; 
and  as  he  writes  about  them  to  the  very  people  whom  he  had 
introduced  to  them,  at  the  very  moment  of  their  habitual 
exercise,  and  with  a  viow  to  a  right  estimate  of  their  relative 
value,  we  are  thrown  l)y  his  allusions  into  the  midst  of  the 
facts,  and  can  see  for  ourselves  what  was  really  going  on. 

To    the   author    of    the   Book    of    Acts,    the   miracle    of 
Pentecost  undoubtedly  consisted  in  the  power  conferred  on  a 
set  of  Galileans  to  speak  intelligibly  to  a  mixed  audience  of 
foreigners,   without  requiring  from   any  one  a  knowledge  of 
more  than  his  own  language.     Fifteen  different  countries  had 
their  representatives  present ;  while  the  disciples,  new  fired  by 
the  Spirit,  set  forth  "  the  wonderful  works  of  God  ;  "    and  not 
one  of  the  foreigners  missed  the  story.     Each   "heard  in  his 
own  tongue  in  wliich  ho  was  born."*     Whether  the  historian 
planted  the    supernatural  phenomenon  in   the  speaker,  who 
delivered  himself  in  a  lanQ;uaQ;e  he  had  never  learned,  or  in 
lilie  hearer,  who  received  in  one  tongue  what  was  uttered  in 
another  ;  whether,  in  his  view,  this  happened  now  to  one,  and 
then    to   another,    of  the  listeners,    or  to  all  at   once, — are 
secondary  questions,  which  may  be  left  to  curious  interpreters  : 
the  essential  point  is,  that  to  these  Christian  recipients  of  the 

*  Acts  ii.  7-12. 


270  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Holy  Spirit  is  attributed  tlie  facultj^  v^'itliout  liuman  means  of 
communication,  of  preaching  to  foreigners  not  less  intelligibly 
than  to  their  own  countrymen.  True  it  is  that  in  subsequent 
instances  which  the  author  adduces  of  this  "  sign,"  viz.,  the 
conversion  of  the  Cornelius  household,*  and  the  baptism  of 
the  Apollos  school,!  there  seems  no  room  for  the  exercise  of 
such  a  gift,  all  the  persons  present  being  speakers  of  Greek  ; 
but  that  the  phenomenon  is  here  meant  to  be  still  the  same  is 
evident  from  Peter's  own  account  of  his  mission  to  the  cen- 
turion:  "  As  I  began  to  speak,  the  Holy  Spirit  fell  on  them, 
as  on  us  at  the  beginning.'"  I 

The  gift  thus  described  by  the  historian  of  its  origin 
evidently  played  only  too  conspicuous  a  part  in  the  early 
assemblies  of  the  Christians  ;  for  we  find  the  apostle  of  the 
Gentiles  disapproving  its  display  at  Corinth,  and  treating  it 
with  marked  disparagement ;  and,  in  the  reasons  which  he 
assigns  for  his  judgment,  we  obtain  a  lively  picture  of  its 
nature  and  results.  He  attributes  to  it  the  following 
characters : — 

1.  It  is  a  mode  of  speaking,  not  to  men,  hut  to  God.^  One 
who  resorts  to  it  edifies  himself,  and  not  the  assembly.  |!  "  If," 
says  the  apostle,  "  I  come  to  you  speaking  with  tongues, 
what  shall  I  profit  you '?  "  *n  "Except  ye  utter  with  the 
tongue  intelligible  words,  how  shall  it  be  known  what  is 
spoken?  for  ye  will  be  speaking  into  the  air."**  The  gift, 
therefore,  isolates  the  individual,  and  constitutes  a  private 
act  of  devotion,  in  which  the  assembly  cannot  participate. 

2.  It  is  an  unconscious  act  of  impulse,  not  attended  by  the 
understanding,  an  expression  of  "  the  Spirit  "  without  "  the 
intellect:"  "My  spirit  prayeth ;  but  my  understanding  is 
unfruitful."!  +  "  If  thou  shalt  bless  with  the  spirit,  how  shall 
the  unlearned  say  Amen  at  thy  giving  of  thanks,  seeing  he 
under standeth   not  what    thou   sayest?"t]:     "I  had  rather 


*  Acts  X.  44,  46:  "  While  Peter  yet  spake  these  words,  the  Holy  Spirit  fell 
on  all  them  that  heard  the  word  .  .  .  and  they  heard  them  speak  with 
tongues,  and  magnify  God." 

t  xix.  6.  J  xi.  15.  g  1  Cor.  xiv.  2. 

li  Ibid.  4.  ^  Ibid.  6.  **  Ibid.  9. 

ft  Ibid.  14.  J:  Ibid.  IG. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE   SCRIPTURES.  271 

speak  five  words  with  my  understanding,  that  I  may  instruct 
others  also,  than  ten  thousand  words  in  a  tongue."* 

3.  Hence  it  needs  an  inteiyrctcr  to  bring  out  the  thought, 
even  for  the  speaker  himself,  and  still  more  for  others  :  "  Let 
him  that  speaketh  in  a  tongue  pray  that  he  may  interpret."! 
"  If  any  man  speak  in  a  tongue,  let  one  interpret ;  but  if  there 
be  no  interpreter,  let  him  keep  silence  in  the  church,  and  let 
him  speak  to  himself  and  to  God. "J  Else  no  other  im- 
pression can  be  produced  on  occasional  attendants  coming 
in,  than  that  the  Christians  are  mad.§ 

In  consistency  with  these  statements,  the  effect  of  this  gift 
is  compared  with  the  tinkling  of  metal,!!  with  the  note  of 
a  wind  or  stringed  instrument, H  with  the  sound  of  an 
unintelligible  language;**  and,  by  its  unmeaning  and 
unedifying   character,    it   is    contrasted    with    the    prophetic 

f unction,  tt  ' 

"What  is  here   described  and  deprecated  has  evidently  no- 
thing in  common  with  miraculous  power  of  communicating  with 
foreigners  ;  for  the  favoured  possessor  of  such  a  gift  would 
certainly  use  it  for  the  expression  of  conscious  and  coherent 
thought :  he  would  address  that  thought  to  men,  and  not  to 
God  :  and  he  would  need  no  interpreter,  the  gift  itself  having 
no  function,  except  to  save  interpretation.     Listening  to  the 
apostle's  graphic  hints,  we  find  ourselves  in  an  assembly,  where 
member  after  member  rises  and  pours  forth,  with  the  air  of  one 
possessed,  a  torrent  of  vehement,  inarticulate  sounds  ;  breathing 
forth,  it  may  be,  distinguishable  tones  of  varying  emotion, — 
now  plaintive  and  pathetic,  now  hopeful  and  jubilant,  or  again 
stormy  and  indignant, — but  like  music  without  words,  or  like 
a  laugh  or  a  wail  overheard,  betraying  no  definite  thought, 
except  to  the  Header  of  all  hearts.     There  seems  to  be  a  certain 
point  of  tension  at  which  every  kind  of  emotion,  escaping  the 
restraints  of  reason,  takes  possession  of  the  powers  of  utter- 
ance, and  bursts  into  involuntary  voice ;  and  those  who  have 
witnessed  the  reproduction,  at  Edward  Irving's  church,  of  the 
Corinthian  phenomena,  will  not  claim  for  the  religious  affec- 

*  1  Cor.  xiv.  10.  t  Iljid.  13.  t  Ibid.  27,  28.     >  •    ,-. 

§  Ibid.  23.  .  II  1  Cor.  xiii.  1.  HI  Cor.  xiv.  7. 

•'  Ibid.  10.       '  tt  Ibid.  2-4.  , 


272  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIAILY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

tions  any  exemption  from  this  gsneral  law.  That  such 
hysterical  or  ecstatic  excitement  should  be  regarded,  like 
other  enthusiastic  spontaneities,  as  a  divine  inspiration,  can 
occasion  no  surprise.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  see  how  mteiyreta- 
tion  would  be  possible  :  it  would  consist  in  at  once  finding, 
doubtless  from  the  rich  poetry  of  prophet  and  psalmist,  words 
that  chimed  in  with  the  mood  and  tone  of  the  speaker,  and 
filled  in  with  clear  images  his  vast  and  formless  feeling. 

If  this  is  at  all  a  true  representation  of  the  objective  facts, 
how  long  would  it  take  for  tradition  to  give  them  the  form 
they  assume  in  the  Book  of  Acts  ?  Without  pretending  to 
measure  the  interval,  we  may  safely  say,  that  they  must  have 
long  passed  out  of  experience,  and  even  of  memory.  The 
apostolic  age  must  have  been  not  only  gone,  but  completely 
idealized,  before  the  power  of  speaking  foreign  languages 
which  had  never  been  learned  could  be  reckoned  among  the 
gifts  of  the  Spirit,  and  identified  with  a  phenomenon  so  com- 
pletely opposite  in  its  character.  The  story,  probably,  arose 
from  a  misinterpretation  of  the  language  employed,  when  the 
facts  described  by  it  had  been  forgotten.  In  the  oldest  form 
of  phrase,  "to  speak  with  a  tongue"'  {yXdjamj  AoAay),*  the 
word  "tongue"  does  not  mean  "language"  (for  which  a 
different  word,  ?Au\eKTog,\  would  be  used),  but  the  bodily 
member  most  active  in  speech ;  and  it  is  resorted  to  on  account 
of  the  inarticulate  nature  of  the  utterance;  because,  to  the 
hearer  who  understands  nothing  of  what  is  said,  the  act  of 
talking  appears  a  purely  physical  performance,  a  mere  gabble, 
in  which  his  attention  rests  upon  the  organic  machinery. 
Next  the  phrase  passed  into  the  plural :  acts  of  "  speaking 
loith  tongues"  {■y\w(raaiQ\a\Hv),l  and  "  kinds  of  tongues"  %  were 
mentioned ;  because,  in  different  cases,  distinct  types  of  feeling 
perceptibly  prompted  the  utterance,  so  that  a  plurality  was 
cognizable  in  the  phenomenon.  And,  finally,  the  fuller 
phrases,  "other tongues"  {iTiomq  y\h)Gaaig\a\vv),\\  and  "new 
tongues"  {KCHvaiq  yXtoacaig),^  came  into  use, in  order  to  contrast 
the  act  with  common  speech,  and  give  it  an  origin  other  than 

*  1  Cor.  xiv.  9,  13,  27.  t  Acts  ii.  8.  +1  Cor.  xiv.  5,  6,  28. 

§  yivr]  yK<x>a-(T(iv,  1  Cor.  xii.  28 ;  compare  ytur)  (pcovo)!/,  1  Cor.  xiv.  10. 
\  Acts  ii.  4.  1[  Mark  xvi.  17. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE^  SCRIPTURES.  273 

human,  and  nciv  to  experience.  It  was  the  tongue  of  the  Spirit, 
an  instniinent  unfamiliar  for  the  expression  of  feehng,  which 
was  here  concerned.  At  a  distance  from  its  origin,  this  real 
meaning  of  the  words  was  lost :  "  tongues "  was  construed 
into  "  king  ua'ies"  ;  *  and  "  o(/<cr  tongues  "  were  supposed  to 
be  dialects  different  from  the  speaker's  own;  and  out  of  a 
misunderstood  phrase  was  born  a  stupendous  miracle. 

II.  The  Epistles  of  Paul  supply  several  autobiographical 
particulars,  which  enable  us  to  check  the  story  of  his  life  as 
presented  in  the  Book  of  Acts. 

It  has  been  already  shown  that  the  three  accounts  given  by  the 
historian  of  the  apostle's  conversion  (two  of  them  in  speeches 
of  his  own)  are  not  circumstantially  consistent ;  and  to  dis- 
regard as  trivial  the  particulars  in  which  they  are  at  variance 
involves  an  obvious  confusion  of  ideas.  In  itself,  it  is  pretty 
much  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  his  companions  on  the 
journey  were  standing  or  prostrate;  whether  they  only  saw,  or 
only  heard,  the  elements  of  the  miracle ;  whether  Jesus  said 
a  little  more  or  a  little  less :  any  one  of  the  assigned  forms  for 
the  event  would  be  nearly  as  compatible  with  its  efficacy  as 
another.  But  these  varieties,  though  neutral  to  the  character 
of  the  incident,  are  not  neutral  to  the  value  of  its  evidence. 
The  question,  whether  the  vision  of  Jesus  was  purely  subjec- 
tive, limited  to  the  consciousness  of  Saul,  or  was  an  objective 
perception  of  external  facts,  can  be  determined  only  by 
appealing  to  other  witnesses  than  the  person  himself  en- 
tranced; and  our  trust  in  their  testimony  cannot  but  be 
shaken,  if  they  tell  us,  —  now  that  the,y  were  on  their 
feet,  then  that  they  were  on  the  ground;  now  that  they 
heard  the  voice,  then  that  they  did  not  hear  it,  but  only 
saw  the  light;  now  that  the  voice  spoke  twenty-six  words, t 
then  that  it  spoke  eighty-six  words,]:  including  a  commis- 
sion unmentioned  in  the  shorter  form.  To  all  who  lay 
great  stress  upon  the  outward  phenomenon  wliich  arrested 
the  journey,  these  differences  are  of  undeniable  impor- 
tance; but  they  are  slight  in  presence  of  the  broader  con- 
trast  between    each    and    all    of    these    recitals,    and    the 

*  As  in  Acts  ii.  11 :  Tu'ii  »;/xer«'paiy  yXaxTcrais. 
t  Acts  xxii.  7-10.  4:  xxvi.  14.-18. 

T 


274  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

picture  of  his  change,  which  we  incidentally  gather  from 
Paul  himself.  Though  occasions  repeatedly  occur  in  his 
Epistles  when,  as  in  his  defensive  orations  in  the  Acts,  an 
appeal  to  a  splendid  miracle  at  noonday,  publicly  installing 
him  into  a  divine  office,  would  be  conclusive  for  his  purpose, 
and  save  many  a  superfluous  circuit  of  argument,  he  never 
once  describes  such  an  occurrence,  but  speaks  of  his  change 
in  terms  more  suitable  to  an  inward  than  to  an  outward  reve- 
lation. He  says,  indeed,  in  relation  to  the  risen  Christ,  that 
he  "  has  seen  "  him,*  and  that,  too,  at  a  time  later  than  his 
'appearances  to  the  original  apostles ;  t  but  the  nature  of  this 
personal  vision,  its  place,  its  occasion,  its  contents,  are  left  in 
silence.  No  scene  or  circumstances  are  named  by  which  it 
can  be  identified,  no  companions  mentioned  whose  partnership 
in  it  would  settle  its  objective  reality ;  nor  is  it  made  either 
the  moment  of  his  conversion,  or  the  medium  of  his  summons 
to  preach  a  gospel  of  his  own  in  a  new  and  special  field.  The 
phrase,  indeed,  "  I  have  seen  Christ,"  does  not  fit  well  the 
noonday  scene  on  Damascus  road ;  for  in  no  one  of  the  accounts 
of  it  is  it  said  that  Jesus  was  seen.  A  voice  declared  him ; 
but,  in  the  dazzling  light  which  alone  was  visible,  it  is  not 
pretended  that  any  form  was  discerned.  And,  while  all  allu- 
sion to  an  instantaneous  conversion  by  external  miracle  fails 
us  in  the  apostle's  letters,  the  internal  origin  of  his  new  con- 
viction seems  to  speak  in  the  words,  "  When  it  pleased  God  to 
reveal  his  Son  in  me,"  \ — a  phrase  which  no  one  could  trans- 
fer to  the  narrative  in  the  Book  of  Acts,  without  feeling  its 
incongruity.  Strangely,  indeed,  would  so  splendid  a  miracle 
be  thrown  away  upon  a  convert  who  had  everywhere  to  con- 
front the  impugners  of  his  apostolate  and  enemies  of  his 
mission,  to  defend  the  rights  of  his  disciples,  and  make  good 
the  authority  of  his  gospel,  yet  instead  of  simply  reciting  the 
facts  on  which  all  the  legitimacy  of  his  action  depended,  and 
appealing  to  the  witnesses  who  had  part  in  it,  rested  his  case 
partly  on  the  fruits  of  his  labours,  but  chiefly  on  an  elaborate 
scheme  of  theology  reasoned  out  from  the  nature  of  man,  the 
government  of  God,  and  the  analogies  and  intimations  of  the 
Old  Testament. 

*  1  Cor.  ix.  1.  t  1  Cor.  xv.  8.  %  Gal.  i.  16. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.         275 

If  Paul  is  reticent  about  his  conversion,  he  is  not  so  about 
its  sequel.  Does  he,  then,  confirm  the  main  statements  of 
our  historian;  viz.,  that,  in  the  very  synagogues  at  Damascus 
to  which  he  had  been  sent  as  a  persecutor,  he  immediately 
preached  as  a  Christian  ;  that,  "  after  manj^  days,"  he  escaped 
a  design  against  his  life,  and  fled  to  Jerusalem  ;  that  there, 
through  the  intervention  of  Barnabas,  he  overcame  the  first 
distrust  of  the  Christians,  and  consorted  with  the  apostles, 
and  preached  boldly,  till  the  enmity  of  the  Hellenists  com- 
pelled his  retreat  to  Tarsus  ?  On  the  contrary,  he  tells  us, 
that,  "  immediately"  on  his  change  of  mind,  he  avoided  all 
contact  with  men,  and  did  not  go  up  to  Jerusalem  to  those 
who  were  apostles  before  him,  but  went  awa}'  into  Arabia ; 
and,  on  returning,  sought  Damascus  again ;  and  only  after 
three  years  presented  himself  at  Jerusalem,  and  spent  fifteen 
days  with  Peter,  seeing  no  other  apostle  except  James,  the 
brother  of  Jesus,*  It  is  surely  impossible  to  conceive  a  more 
precise  and  thorough-going  contradiction,  point  by  point,  than 
between  these  two  stories.  If  they  both  refer  to  the  same 
period,  this  must  be  admitted  ;  but  it  may  be  said,  considering 
the  absence  of  chronology  from  the  Book  of  Acts,  may  we 
not  suppose  its  visit  of  Paul  to  Jerusalem,  and  preaching 
there,  "and  in  the  country  of  Judaea, "f  to  come  in  after  the 
events  which  he  himself  enumerates,  i.e.,  at  the  end  of  his 
three  j^ears'  absence  from  the  holy  city?  Happily,  of  this 
time,  also,  his  own  words  supply  an  exact  report ;  "  next," 
he  says  (i.e.,  after  his  fifteen  days  with  Peter),  "  I  came  into 
the  regions  of  Syria  and  Cilicia ;  and  my  face  was  vnkuoioi 
to  the  ehiirehes  of  CJirist  in  JiuUea;  and  they  had  only  heard 
that  their  former  persecutor  was  preacliing  the  faith  which 
once  he  destroyed."^  Thus  it  appears  that  he  had  never  shown 
himself  to  the  Christians  of  the  metropolis  and  its  neighbour- 
liood,  but  remained  to  them  an  object  of  rumour  from  a 
distance,  throughout  the  period  spent,  according  to  the  Book 
of  Acts,  in  consorting  with  them,  and  everywhere  boldly 
preacliing  to  them.  And  how  long  did  he  continue  thus  a 
stranger  to  them  ?  This,  also,  he  distinctly  tells  us  :  "  Then, 
after   fourteen   years,  I   went   up   again   to   Jerusalem   with 

*  Gal.  i.  16-19.  t  Acts  xxvi.  20.  *  Gal.  i.  21-23. 

T    12 


276  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Barnabas."  The  visit  ^Yas,  "  by  revelation,  privately,  to  lay 
before  the  reputed  leaders  "  "  the  gospel  which  he  preached  to 
the  Gentiles ;  "  and  so  to  obviate  the  risk  of  any  frustrating 
opposition.*  Up  to  the  time,  therefore,  of  his  writing  to  the 
Galatians,  i.e.,  to  the  middle  of  the  third  missionary  journey, 
by  the  reckoning  of  the  Acts,t  Paul  had  been  only  twice  at 
Jerusalem,  on  both  occasions  without  any  public  appearance  ; 
and  we  must  set  down  as  fictions  two  out  of  the  four  visits 
which  the  historian  distributes  over  the  same  period.!  And 
further,  as  the  second  visit  was  designed  to  settle  terms,  by 
private  agreement,  with  the  elder  apostles,  for  the  recognition 
of  Paul's  Gentile  gospel,  it  is  plain  that  no  public  under- 
standing, much  less  any  formulated  treaty,  had  thus  far 
defined  the  conditions  of  this  gospel ;  and  that,  for  seventeen 
years,  he  had  made  himself  its  independent  organ  in  thought 
and  action,  without  approaching  the  Jewish-Christian  field, 
and  now  brought  in,  not  its  principles  for  judgment,  but  its 
fruits  for  acknowledgment. 

It  must  be  already  obvious  that  these  inconsistencies 
between  the  two  writers  are  too  uniform  in  character  to  be 
treated  as  mere  historical  inaccuracies  :  they  are  the  signs  of 
divergent  literary  purposes.  The  object  of  the  apostle  is  to 
establish  the  originality  of  his  Gentile  movement  and  doctrine, 
to  show  that  they  arose  as  a  sacred  commission  given  person- 
ally to  him,  and  lay  entirely  between  God  and  himself, 
indebted  for  no  help,  and  needing  no  authority,  from  men. 
With  this  view,  he  does  not  shrink  from  disclaiming,  even  in 
a  tone  of  contempt,  all  obligation  to  "  those  apostles  who 
passed  for  something  considerable,"  and  stood  for  "  pillars  " 
at  Jerusalem,  and  plainly  declaring  that  he  had  nothing  to 

*  Gal.  ii.  1,  2. 

t  The  chronology  is  obtained  thus  :  when  Paul  escaped  from  Damascus, 
Arctas  was  in  possession  of  the  city ;  for  the  gates  were  watched  by  order  of 
his  commandant  (2  Cor.  xi.  32).  The  city  did  not  belong  to  him,  but  was 
temporarily  under  his  control,  through  political  complications,  in  the  spring 
of  A.D.  37.  This  gives  the  date  of  Paul's  conversion.  Seventeen  years  from 
that  time  brings  us  to  a.d.  54.  The  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  was  written 
either  from  Ephesus,  about  a.d.  55,  or  from  Corinth,  about  a.d.  58. 

:;:  Viz.,  from  Damascus,  after  his  conversion  (ix.  26) ;  from  Antioch,  to  re- 
lieve the  Jerusalem  Christians  (xi.  27-30);  from  Antioch  with  Barnabas,  to  the 
•'  first  council,"  after  the  first  journey  (xv.) ;  from  Cenclu'eEe,  after  the  second 
journey,  under  a  vow  {xviii.  18,  scg^q.). 


Chap.  11.]      PROTESTANTS  AND   THE  SCRIPTURES.         277 

thank  tliem  for  ;  Avhile  they,  on  the  other  hand,  were  too 
much  struck  with  the  practical  evidence  of  divine  blessing  on 
his  ministry  to  exclude  it  from  fellowship,  or  hesitate  to  leave 
its  field  to  him  ;  reserving  to  themselves  the  Jewish  mission, 
and  stipulating  only  for  a  considerate  remembrance  of  the 
l^oorer  brethren.*  The  author  of  the  Book  of  Acts  works 
throughout  to  precisely  the  opposite  end  ;  insisting  at  every 
step  on  Paul's  dependence  on  those  who  were  Christians 
before  him,  on  his  direct  apprenticeship  to  them  as  their 
agent,  on  his  accord  with  them  in  principle  and  method,  and 
difference  from  them  only  in  his  geographical  area  of  life. 
Consigned,  at  first,  to  the  care  and  instruction  of  the  Jew 
Ananias,  taken  up  into  the  patronage  of  Barnabas,  called  in 
as  a  subordinate  helper  in  the  first  community  open  to 
Gentiles,  at  the  end  of  every  journey  appearing  at  Jerusalem 
to  render  an  account,  to  bring  a  tribute,  or  to  exhibit  himself 
under  the  most  rigorous  Jewish  vows,  he  is  exhiljited  as 
called,  indeed,  by  Christ,  but  as  trained  and  employed  by  the 
Church,  and  loval  to  its  leaders  and  decrees.  While  this 
difference  of  purpose  between  Paul  and  his  historian  occasions 
discrepancies  in  many  biographical  particulars,  it  also  goes 
much  deeper,  and  leads  to  our  next  contrast. 

III.  The  whole  personality  of  Paul,  his  characteristic 
thought,  his  method  of  work,  as  presented  in  the  Book  of 
Acts,  are  inconsistent  with  his  own  self-revelations. 

Whatever  obscurities  may  be  found  in  the  Pauline  theology, 
and  whatever  estimate  may  be  made  of  what  is  clear  in  it, 
it  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  was  a  theologian,  if  he  was  any- 
thing ;  that  he  had  wrought  out  for  himself  a  comprehensive 
theory  of  human  nature,  of  the  divine  government,  and  of 
the  stadia  of  history  in  the  past,  and  to  the  close  of  its  drama ; 
that  with  this  theory  his  Christianity  was  identified,  so  that 
he  required  its  leading  conceptions  and  characteristic  terms 
for  every  exposition  of  his  gospel.  The  whole  problem  of  the 
world  was  for  him  resolved  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ. 
The  central  point  in  which  the  solution  lay  was  the  cross  of 
Christ :  the  redeeming  efficacy  of  the^  cross  presupposed  both 
a  particular  conception  of  humanity  and  a  double  nature  in 

•  Gal.  ii.  G-IO. 


278  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

Christ,  to  appreciate   which  we  must  be  famihar  with  the 
relation  of  "  flesh "  and  "  spirit,"  of  "sin"  and  "transgres- 
sion," of  "  knowledge"  and  "  power,"  of  "faith  "  and  "  law," 
of  "  life"  and  "death;"  and,  while  the   "righteousness  of 
God  "  was  freely  open  to  all  who  had  faith  thus  to  receive  it 
in  place  of  their  own,  that  faith  was  conditional  on  a  whole 
system  of  prior  thought  and   feeling.     Hence  the  apostle's 
simplest  modes  of  formulating  the  essence   of  Christianity 
carry  in  them  psychological,  ethical,  and  theosophic  postu- 
lates, which   are  tantamount  to  a  scheme  of  the  universe ; 
nor  can  he,  in  a  short  letter,  defend  his  Galatian   teaching 
from  its  Judaical  impugners  without  furnishing  a  text-book 
of  dogmatic   theology    for   the   construction   of   future   con- 
fessions of  faith,   and  the  use  of  thousands  of  evangelical 
professors  through  the  successive   ages  of   the  Church.     In 
proportion  as  his  influence  has  been  in  the  ascendant  have  all 
subsequent  forms  of  Christianity  assumed  the  same  character, 
— of  vast  doctrinal  constructions,  more  or  less  closely  com- 
pacted, and  covering  almost  the  whole  ground  of  philosophy 
as  well  as  of  religion.     And  in   his  day,  as  in  ours,  there 
stood,  in  direct  antithesis  to  this,  that  simpler  type  of  belief, 
which,  in  dealing  with  sin,  is  content   with  bringing  it  to 
repentance,   and   offering   it    mercy   on   self- surrender ;    and 
which,    thinking   no   more   of  the  death  than  of  the  life  of 
Jesus,  makes  a  whole  of  both,  as  the  realization  of  the  true 
filial   union   of    soul    with   God.      The   primitive   Christian 
samples  of  these  opposite  ways  of  thinking  were,  indeed,  far 
from  identical  with  ours ;  but  the  central  motto  of  each  has 
remained, — for  the   one,  "  salvation  by  the  cross  ;  "  for  the 
other,  "  return  unto  God  through  repentance  and  faith." 

Now,  in  the  second  section  of  the  Book  of  Acts,  we  have  a 
speech  of  Paul's  for  each  of  his  three  missionary  journeys, — 
the  first  addressed  to  Jews,*  the  second  to  heathens,  t  the 
third  to  Christians,! — and,  after  his  apprehension,  reported 
defences  of  himself  before  the  people, §  the  council,  H  and  the 
court  at  Csesarea  ;1[  all  of  them  i^rofessing  to  give  the  sub- 
stance of  his  faith  :  yet  in  no  one  of  them  do  we  find  a  trace 

*  Acts  xiii.  15-41.  \  xvii.  22-31.  %  xx.  18-35. 

§  xxii.  1-21.  II  xxiii.  1-6  ;  xxiv.  10-21.  U  xxvi.2-29. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  279 

of  his    characteristic    doctrine,   or   a   single   thought   which 
serves  to  identity  him  with  the  writer  of  his  Epistles.     In 
short,  "  Ms  [j08i)d  "  is  not  ilierc  ;  and  to  shift  from  the  Chm'ch 
of  Chalmers  to  that  of  Channing  could  scarcely  change  the 
atmosphere   more   than   to   pass    from   the    Epistle   to    the 
Komans  to  the  address  on  Mars  Hill.     Instead  of  his  own, 
the  opposite  gospel  is  thrown  to  the  front ;  and  a  prominence 
is  given  to  the  lesson  of  repentance  and  moral  reformation,* 
which  is  by  no  means  Pauline.     Scarcely  is  anything  attri- 
buted to  him   which,  in  its   essence,  might  not  liave  fallen 
from  any  liberal  Jew ;  and  what  Christian  element  there  is 
consists  of  historical    rather  than  doctrinal   statement.     To 
apply   another  test,  there  is  not  a  speech  of  Paul's  which 
might  not — mutatis  mutandis — have  been  set  down  to  Peter  : 
the  vehement  contrast  between  the  two,  which  created  in  the 
Clementines  a  special  literature,  is  all  chafed  away,  and  a 
smooth  level  left,  from  which  all  personality  has  vanished  in 
favour  of  a   superficial  catholicity.     If  ever,  for  a  moment, 
there  is  a  plii"ase  with  the  Pauline  riiui  in  it,  it  turns  out, 
when  put  to  the  proof,  to  be  but  an  echo  without  the  thought ; . 
as  in  the  sentence,  "  By  him  all  that  believe  are  justified  from 
all  things  from  which  ye  could  not  be  justified  by  the  law  of 
Moses," t  where  the  "justification  "  is  used  only  in  the  nega- 
tive sense  of  acquittal,  and  quite  misses  the  positive  appro- 
priation of  a  foreign  divine  righteousness,  which  lies  in  the 
meaning  of  the  apostle's  word. 

The  Pauline  doctrine  of  the  cross  not  only  involved  as  a 
consequence,  but  carried  in  its  very  essence,  the  absolute 
extinction,  already  accomplished,  of  the  Mosaic  law,  and  the 
emergence  of  the  human  soul,  in  its  relation  with  God,  into 
a  faith  and  love  possible  alike  to  all.  The  apostle  uncon- 
ditionally cuts  out  the  whole  legal  period  from  Sinai  to 
Calvary  as  a  parenthetical  interpolation,  interrupting  the 
proper  religious  history  of  mankind,  and  designed  only  to 
prove,  by  its  fatal  spiritual  barrenness,  the  incapacity  of 
humanity  for  its  own  salvation,  and  reverts  in  the  free  faith 
of  Christ  to  that  free  faith  of  Abraham  which  made  him  "  the 
friend  of  God,"  linking  these  two  together  as  contiguous 
•  Acts  xvii.  30,  31 ;  xxiv.  25.  t  ^'^-  39- 


28o  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED,    f Book  II. 

phenomena  in  the  divine  hfe  of  men.  Nothing  can  be  more 
repugnant  to  him  than  any  half- view  upon  this  matter  :  he  is 
Antinomian  to  the  heart  of  him ;  and  at  the  least  pretence  of 
continuing,  as  if  sacred,  any  residue  of  positive  Jewish  enact- 
ment, he  fires  up  with  indignation,  and  treats  it  as  a  disloyalty 
to  Christ,  and  a  rejection  of  the  grace  of  God.  When  Jewish 
Christians,  "  spying  out  the  liberty  which  he  has  in  Christ 
Jesus,"  and  frightened  at  it,  come  to  him  with  recommenda- 
tions to  compromise,  he  calls  them  "false  brethren;"  and 
when  they  want  him  to  naturalize  Titus,  who  was  a  Gentile, 
by  passing  him  through  the  Jewish  rite,  he  would  not  for  a 
moment  submit  to  such  miserable  counsels,  so  as  to  build  up 
again  what  he  had  destroyed.*  Yet  the  Book  of  Acts 
attributes  to  him  throughout  a  course  of  conduct  directly  at 
variance  with  this  uncompromising  conviction  and  habit.  It 
would  persuade  us,  that,  though  he  would  not  have  the 
heathen  personality  of  Titus  touched,  he  thought  it  prudent 
to  turn  the  half-caste  Timothy  into  a  Jew,  as  a  qualification 
for  j)reaching  the  gospel,  t  It  represents  him  as  twice  taking 
upon  himself,  without  apparent  motive  beyond  the  display  of 
a  Judaic  zeal  and  piety,  vows  of  special  asceticism,  which, 
under  the  Nazirite  law,  could  be  discharged  only  at  the 
temple.  \  It  exhibits  him  in  his  speeches,  especially  after  his 
indictment,  as  a  good  orthodox  Jew,  entirely  loyal  to  the 
national  law  and  traditions,  and  absolutely  limiting  his 
teachings  to  the  contents  of  "  Moses  and  the  prophets, "§ 
holding,  therefore,  a  Christianity  which  was  not  the  opposite, 
but  the  development,  of  Judaism.  It  sends  him  forth  as  a 
missionary  primarily  to  the  synagogue,  and  makes  any  exten- 
sion of  his  preaching  beyond,  conditional  on  the  prior  rejection 
of  his  message  there ;  so  that  the  universality  of  his  gospel  is 
not  in  its  principle,  but  in  its  accident ;  and,  if  the  Jews  were 
not  stupid,  the  heathen  would  not  be  saved.  It  sets  him 
forth  as  a  consenting  party  to  the  treaty  at  Jerusalem, 
defining  the  conditions  of  Gentile  discipleship ;  though  they 
make  essentials  of  some  things  to  him  indifferent,  and  forbid 
the  sacrificial  meats,  which,  except  where  tenderness  to  weak 

*  Gal.  ii.  3-5,  18.  t  Acts  xvi.  1-3. 

+  xviii.  18 ;  xxi.  20-2G.  §  xxvi.  22. 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.  2S1 

consciences  came  in,  he  mihesitatinp,ly  allows.*  How  dif- 
ferent was  the  real  feeling  towards  him,  and  the  estimate  of 
his  attitude  with  regard  to  the  ttSwXo^ura  in  the  parent 
Church  of  the  apostolic  age,  may  be  gathered  from  the  bitter 
invectives  in  the  Apocalypse  of  John  against  "  the  doctrine  of 
Balaam,"  which  allows  of  "  eating  things  offered  to  idols."  f 
In  short,  all  the  burning  characteristics  of  the  apostle  of  the 
Gentiles  are  paled  down  in  the  artificial  picture  of  the  Book 
of  x\cts;  and  no  one  who  has  caught  the  focus  of  his  thought,- 
and  become  possessed  of  the  intense  image  which  it  leaves, 
can  recognize  his  personality  in  the  liberal,  courtly,  and  com- 
promising Jewish  Christian  of  the  historian's  narrative. 

IV.  If,  from  the  Pauline  section  of  the  Book  of  Acts,  we 
turn  to  the  other,  the  faith  and  work  attributed  to  Peter 
present  variances  no  less  marked  from  the  picture  sketched, 
though  faintly  sketched,  elsewhere.  The  one  personal  ap- 
pearance which  he  puts  in  within  the  range  of  Paul's  Epistles 
is  singularly  significant  both  of  his  character  and  of  his  posi- 
tion. He  is  on  a  visit  at  Antioch  ;  and,  moving  in  the  society 
of  its  mixed  church,  he  is  daily  thrown  among  Christians  of 
heathen  origin.  Falling  in  with  the  liberal  manners  of  the 
place,  he  meets  them  on  equal  terms,  sits  down  at  table  with 
them,  and  enables  them  to  forget  that  he  is  a  Jew.  This, 
how^ever,  continues  only  so  long  as  he  is  unwatched.  Some 
disciples  wlio  are  his  neighbours  at  Jerusalem,  arriving,  ap- 
parently with  commission  from  James  to  keep  their  eye  upon 
what  is  going  on,  Peter's  catholicity  disappears  ;  he  can  no 
longer  take  a  meal  with  a  Gentile  ;  he  sets  up  an  exclusive 
Jewish  table  ;  and  drawing  to  it  all  the  Israelitish  Christians, 
not  excepting  Barnabas  himself,  he  leaves  the  Gentiles  to 
discover  that,  although  called  brethren  at  Church,  they  are 
aliens  at  dinner,  t  The  rebuke  which  Paul  publicly  gave  to 
him  w^as  probably  too  subtle  for  his  understanding  ;  §  but  his 
conscience  would  sufficiently  convict  him,  only  we  would  fain 
know  whether  its  conflict  was  permanently  settled  on  tlie 
Antioch  side,  or,  as  is  rather  to  be  feared,  by  relapse  into  the 
ways  of  Jerusalem.     Be  that  as  it  may,  one  thing  is  clear 

*  1  Cor.  viii.  4-13;  x.  25-31.  t  Rev.  ii.  1-1-20. 

i  Gal.  ii.  11-13.  S  Ibid.  ii.  14-21.  .       .__ 


282  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II. 

from  this  transaction, — that  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Tweh'e 
there  was  no  communion  bet^Yeen  Jew  and  Gentile,  and  that, 
under  the  e3'es  of  disciples  thence,  Peter  dared  not  break 
bread  in  ethnical  company ;  that,  in  the  central  church,  the 
law  still  drew  the  line  between  sacred  and  profane  ;  and  that 
no  door  was  open  to  the  heathen,  except  through  the  passage 
of  prior  naturalization.  The  usages  of  the  community  were 
evidently  established  upon  this  basis,  and  Peter  lived  in 
habitual  conformity  with  them  ;  else  he  could  have  felt  no 
fear  or  shame  in  the  public  adoption  of  a  freer  life.  The  very 
fact  that  James  had  sent  down  a  commission  of  inspection  to 
Antioch,  which  completely  cowed  all  the  leaders,  except  Paul, 
shows  a  jealous  assertion  of  a  Jewish- Christian  primacy,  re- 
solved to  sanction  no  breaking  of  the  ancient  bounds. 

If  this  was  the  character  of  the  original  Church,  assembled 
under  the  very  shadow  of  the  temple,  and  if  Peter  was  fully 
committed  to  its  principles,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the  part 
assigned  to  him  in  the  Book  of  Acts  ?  There  he  appears  em- 
phatically as  the  first  Gentile  advocate  and  apostle.  Senti- 
ments of  unqualified  universalism  flow  from  his  lips  ;  and, 
while  Paul  is  still  in  the  synagogue,  he  has  already  been  bap- 
tizing Romans :  and  he  alone  admits  them  on  the  avowed 
principle  that  they  are  as  near  and  dear  to  God  as  he  ;  while 
the  "  man  of  Tarsus  "  turns  to  them  only  of  necessity,  when 
the  priority  of  Israel  has  come  to  nought.  It  is  Peter  to  whom 
the  call  of  the  Gentiles  is  revealed,  and  who  learned  from  it 
that  he  was  "  to  call  no  man  common  or  unclean ;  "  who  finds 
that  the  Holy  Spirit  falls  as  graciously  on  the  household  of 
Cornelius  as  on  the  company  at  Pentecost ;  who  pleads,  in  the 
church  convention,  against  laying  on  any  believer  the  legal 
"  yoke  which  neither  they  nor  their  fathers  were  able  to  bear," 
on  the  ground  that  God,  who  knoweth  the  hearts,  hath  put 
no  difference  between  Israelite  and  alien,  but  gives  the  witness 
of  his  grace  to  both.  How  could  thoughts  like  these  be  pub- 
licly and  rejDeatedly  uttered  by  a  man  whose  daily  life  was  in 
utter  and  notorious  contradiction  to  them  ?  And  how  could 
they  be  approved  and  echoed  by  the  very  peoj^le,  including 
James  himself,  the  threat  of  whose  opinion  frightened  Peter 
from  acting  them  out '?     The  representation,  for  those  who 


Chap.  II.]      PROTESTANTS  AND    THE  SCRIPTURES.         2S3 

trust  the  Epistle,  must  stand  as  unhistorical,  due  to  a  treat- 
ment of  ecclesiastical  materials  which  credits  Peter  with 
Pauline  universality,  and  Paul  with  Peter's  legal  loyalty. 

V.  That  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Acts  wrote  with  a  pur- 
pose, or  at  least  preconception,  not  purely  historical,  is  ap- 
parent from  his  anxiety  to  hold  the  balance  of  eminence  even, 
between  the  two  great  apostles  whose  work  about  equally  oc- 
cupies" his  treatise.  No  advocate  of  either  can  quote  from  him 
a  brilliant  act  or  generous  speech  which  eclipses  the  glory  of 
the  other.  If  at  the  "  beautiful  gate,"  a  "  cripple  from  birth  " 
sj)rings  to  his  feet  at  Peter's  word,  and,  leaping  with  joy,  fills 
all  beholders  with  wonder  at  the  power  of  God  ;  so,  by  the 
precincts  of  a  Pagan  temple,  does  Paul  at  Lystra  meet  with 
another  "cripple  from  birth,"  and  sends  him  bounding  among 
the  people,  till  they  cry,  "It  is  the  hand  of  a  God."  *  It  is 
sufficiently  marvellous  that  the  very  shadow  of  Peter  should 
be  found  to  shed  healing  on  the  line  of  sufferers  over  which  it 
swejDt ;  l)ut  no  less  "  special  miracles  did  God  work  by  means 
of  Paul:  "  for  "from  his  body  were  brought  unto  the  sick 
handkerchiefs  or  aprons,  and  the  diseases  departed  from  them, 
and  the  evil  spirits  went  out  of  them."  i-  Do  the  prayers  of 
the  Church  avail  to  bring  down  an  angel  of  rescue  into  the 
prison  at  Jerusalem,  and  strike  off  the  chains  of  Peter,  and 
open  the  gates  of  cell  and  city,  and  restore  him  to  the  disciples 
while  still  at  worship  ?  Just  as  effectual  are  the  prayers  and 
hymns  of  Paul  and  Silas  in  the  jail  at  Philippi,  to  rouse  an 
earthquake  of  deliverance,  and  shake  the  walls  till  every  door 
stood  open,  and  the  keeper  owned  the  hand  of  God,  and  was 
baptized,  t  The  Holy  Spirit  plainly  bears  witness  to  the 
authority  of  Peter  and  John,  l)y  taking  no  notice  of  Philip's 
converts  till  they  have  been  touched  by  their  apostolic  hands, 
but  equally  withheld  itself  from  the  disciples  of  Apollos  till 
the  hands  of  Paul  have  been  laid  upon  them.§  Peter,  brouglit 
face  to  face  with  the  prince  of  magicians,  Simon  ]\Iagus  him- 
self, puts  him  to  shame  ;  but  only  go  with  Paul  to  Paplios, 
and  you  shall  see  him  baffle  Elymas  the  sorcerer,  and   strike 

*  Comp.  Acts  iii.  1-10  ;  xiv.  8-12.  \  Comp.  v.  15  ;  xix.  11,  12. 

X  Comp.  V.  18-25  ;  xii.  4-17  (probably  a  duplicate  tradition),  andxvi.  25-3J. 

§  Comp.  viii.  5-3,  14-17  ;  xix.  1-7. 


284  AUTHORITY  ARTIFICIALLY  MISPLACED.    [Book  II, 

him  blind.*  Not  even  death  is  found  too  strong  for  the  chief 
of  the  Twelve  ;  and  the  departed  spirit  of  the  exemplary 
Dorcas  comes  back  to  her  at  his  prayer ;  but  so,  too,  does  the 
embrace  of  Paul  suffice  to  restore  Hfe  to  Eutychus,  when  he 
had  been  taken  up  dead.f  And  we  have  seen  how  the  message 
to  the  Gentiles,  which  was  the  special  pride  and  boast  of  the 
missionary  of  Tarsus,  is  not  allowed  to  be  appropriated  by 
him,  but  is  allotted,  with  a  kind  of  equilibrium,  to  both  ;  the 
priority  and  the  divine  initiative  being  set  down  to  Peter,  the 
large  field,  the  copious  results,  and  the  crowning  recognition 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  when  the  work  was  done,  being  accorded  to 
Paul.  This  parallelism  is  too  marked  to  be  unintentional,  and 
too  artificial  to  be  historical ;  and  even  though  all  the  materials 
thus  balanced  should  be  drawn  from  previous  sources  (such  as 
the  "  preaching,"  or  the  "  Acts  of  Peter,"  and  some  itineraries 
of  Paul),  without  any  mixture  of  conscious  fiction,  j^et  the 
organizing  principle  which  has  disposed  them  thus  is  evidently 
not  the  simple  service  of  fact,  but  some  interest  in  persons,  or 
schools  of  doctrine,  which  cannot  but  weaken  our  confidence 
in  the  carefulness  of  the  writer.  Whoever  imports  into  a  pro- 
fessed history  anything  of  the  structure  and  the  effects  of  a 
romance  is  inevitably  regarded  with  serious  distrust. 

Of  the  apostolic  age,  then,  judged  by  its  genuine  memorials, 
the  Book  of  Acts  gives  a  distorted  and  highly  ideal  represen- 
tation, changing  the  characteristics  of  its  principal  personages, 
suppressing  its  most  serious  dissensions,  and  assimilating  its 
incompatible  theologies.  The  author  stands  at  a  distance 
from  its  inner  conflicts,  and  sees  only  the  results  which  in 
their  subsidence  they  have  wrought  out.  He  has  been  called 
a  Pauline  disciple ;  but  he  betrays  not  the  slightest  insight 
into  the  system  of  thought  which  distinguished  the  apostle  of 
the  Gentiles,  or  sympathy  with  his  special  genius :  he  simply 
glorifies  his  agency  as  one  of  the  two  great  factors  of  the 
Christian  Church,  discerning  only  the  extension  he  has  given 
to  it,  not  the  element  he  has  infused  into  it.  He  has  been 
regarded  as  representing  the  Catholic,  as  opposed  to  the 
Judaic  version  of  the  gospel ;  but  he  does  so  only  by  abolish- 
ing the   difference   between   them,    attributing   the  broadest 

*  Comp.  viii.  18-24  ;  xiii.  8-1-2.  ,     t  Comp.  ix.  36-42  ;  xx.  7-12, 


Chap,  n.j      FROTESTAyrS  AND    THE   SCRIPTL'RES.  2S5 

liberality  to  the  apostles  at  Jerusalem,  and  treating  Christian 
universality  as  Judaism  rightly  developed.  This  is  the  view 
natural  to  an  observer  stationed  in  the  post-apostolic  age, 
who  saw  the  two  elements,  once  mutually  exclusive,  adjusted 
together  in  the  Church  ;  who  knew  that,  in  fact,  that  Church 
had  spread  from  Jerusalem,  used  the  sacred  books  of  Israel, 
and  claimed  to  be  the  true  heir  of  their  ancient  promises,  but 
whom  the  controversies  and  heart-burnings  leading  to  this 
settled  result  had  reached  only  in  the  faintest  echoes.  His 
work  is  a  retrospective  reconstruction  of  a  drama  which  has 
long  passed  from  the  stage,  and  which  can  be  recovered  only 
by  shreds  of  scenery  preserved,  by  rumoured  memories,  by 
portraits  and  costumes  of  the  chief  actors,  and  by  reasoning 
backwards  from  the  known  catastrophe.  Passages  of  suc- 
cessful restoration  there  may  be ;  but  the  life  and  genius  of 
the  whole  are  not  there.  The  imitation  could  hardly  change 
so  seriously  the  colouring  and  proportions  of  the  original, 
without  the  refracting  power  of  a  generation  between. 


287 


BOOK    III. 

DIVINE  AUTHOBITY  INTERMIXED   WITH  HUMAN  THINGS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    HUMAN   AND    THE    DIVINE    IN    HISTORY. 

If  neither  the  hierarchy  nor  the  canon  can  make  good  a 
claim  to  dictatorial  authority,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  tlie 
sacred  function  ascribed  to  them  is  gone,  and  that  notliing 
divine  is  committed  to  their  keeping.  It  may  well  be  true 
that,  for  the  religious  guidance  of  men,  there  is  a  real  order 
of  dependence  of  the  multitude  upon  the  few,  and  of  ordinary 
ages  upon  special  crises  and  transmitted  products  of  fresh 
spiritual  insight,  though  the  relation  has  degenerated  into 
servility.  But  the  oscillations  of  unreasoning  impulse  always 
shoot  past  the  true  centre  without  a  pause.  The  easy  credulity 
of  mankind  first  insists  on  investing  the  priest  with  magical 
powers,  and  then,  on  discovery  of  their  failure,  turns  upon 
him  fiercely  as  an  impostor.  The  blind  idolater  of  "  Holy 
Writ "  will  have  it  all  infallil)le,  that  it  may  spare  him  the 
cares  of  thought  and  conscience,  and  serve  him  as  sortcs 
faticince  for  the  solution  of  every  question,  and  the  relief  of 
every  scruple  ;  and  then,  when  his  moral  sense  has  outgrown 
the  Israelitish  standard,  and  with  his  critical  discernment  he 
finds  himself  in  the  midst  of  myth  and  legend,  of  vaticinia 
23ost  event  am,  of  conflicting  histories  and  incompatible  doctrines, 
he  vents  his  displeasure,  not  upon  his  own  arbitrary  expecta- 
tions, but  on  the  written  text  which  was  in  no  way  bound  to 
fulfil  them,  and  the  persons  wlioui  lie  IkkI  liiiuself  arrayed  in 
hieratic  robes,  and  now  disclaims  as  mortals  in  working  dress. 


288  THE  DIVINE  PART  [Eook  III. 

Thus  to  stipulate  for  everything  or  nothing,  and  fling  away 
whatever  is  short  of  all  your  fancied  need,  is  the  mere  way- 
wardness of  the  spoilt  child  :  it  is  a  demand  absolutely  at 
variance  with  the  mixed  conditions  of  any  possible  communion 
between  perfect  and  imperfect  natures.  Not  heaven  itself  can 
pour  more  or  purer  spiritual  gifts  into  you  than  your  imme- 
diate capacity  can  hold;  and  if  the  Holy  Spirit  is  to  "lead 
you  into  all  truth,"  it  will  not  be  by  saving  you  the  trouble  of 
parting  right  from  wrong,  but  by  the  ever  keener  severance 
of  the  evil  from  the  good  through  the  strenuous  working  of  a 
quickened  mind. 

Those  whose  dependence  has  been  upon  the  Church  are  not 
without  excuse  in  their  demand  for  unconditional  truth  ;  they 
do  but  too  j)assively  acquiesce  in  a  positive  claim  of  infalli- 
bility already  put  forth  by  their  own  guide.  But  the  Christians 
who  have  wrested  that  pretension  from  the  Church  only  to 
transfer  it  to  the  Scriptures,  charge  upon  the  writers  a  wholly 
fictitious  arrogance,  utterly  at  variance  with  their  prevailing 
humility  and  their  quiet  assumption  of  the  simply  human 
level.  Who  can  better  state  the  condition  of  all  Eevelation 
than  the  Apostle  Paul  at  the  very  moment  of  imparting  it, — 
"  We  have  this  treasure  in  earthen  vessels,  that  the  excellency 
of  the  power  may  be  of  God,  and  not  of  us  "  ?  Far  from 
afiirming  that  the  gift  incurs  no  liability  in  its  transmission, 
he  plainly  says,  "  It  cannot  come  to  you  without  the  alloy  of 
humanity  :  whatever  you  find  in  it  that  is  less  than  perfect, 
charge  upon  us :  for  all  the  rest  give  glory  to  God."  But 
such  modest  terms  are  simply  distasteful  to  the  lazy  will,  that 
would  like  to  have  the  vision,  while  the  eye  that  apx^rehends 
it  Sleeps. 

Yes  :  the  heavenly  essence  in  the  earthen  jar,  the  ethereal 
perfume  in  the  tainting  medium,  the  everlasting  truth  in  the 
fragile  receptacle, — this  is  just  the  combination  which  does 
not  content  the  weakness  and  self-distrust  of  men.  They 
want  not  the  treasure  only,  but  the  casket  too,  to  come  from 
above,  and  be  of  the  crystal  of  the  sky  ;  they  are  afraid  of 
having  the  water  of  life  spilled,  like  the  rain,  upon  the 
meadows,  and  trickle  through  the  common  mould  to  feed  the 
roots  of  beauty  and  of  good  ;  and  they  would  store  it  apart, 


Chap.  I.]  IN  HUMAN  HISTORY.  2S9 

and  set  it  aloft,  and  secure  for  it  a  sacred  inclosure  to  which 
common  men  may  come  for  their  supply.  This  craving  for 
some  accessible  resort  where  the  divine  may  be  found  pure 
and  simple,  some  blessed  island  fast  anchored  in  the  fluctu- 
ating sea  of  things,  has  created  all  the  "  holy  places  "  of  the 
world ;  and  so,  the  ancient  oracle,  the  mediaeval  church,  the 
Protestant  Bible,  have  been  severall}'  detached  from  the  scene 
and  conditions  of  natural  humanity,  and  regarded  as  mere 
media  of  unerring  truth  and  grace.  That  this  turns  out  to 
be  a  dream  of  vain  desire,  that  in  this  world  no  spot,  no  body 
of  men,  no  set  of  books,  can  be  insulated  as  the  peculium  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  will  surprise  no  one  who  remembers  that,  in 
the  weaving  of  history,  two  agents  are  insep3.rable  partners  ; 
and  that,  even  where  the  pattern  is  most  divine,  the  web  that 
bears  it  must  still  be  human.  Whatever  higher  inspiration 
visits  our  world  must  use  our  nature  as  its  organ,  must  take 
the  mould  of  our  receptive  capacit_y,  and  mingle  with  the 
existing  life  of  thought  and  affection.  How  then  can  it  l)oth 
assume  their  form  and  escape  their  limitations  ?  how  flow 
into  the  currents  of  our  minds  without  being  diluted  there '? 
how  dissolve  itself  in  them  without  any  taint  from  their 
impurity?  You  cannot  receive  the  light  on  a  refracting  sur- 
face, yet  expect  it  to  pursue  its  way  still  straight  and  colour- 
less. And  the  soul  of  a  man,  especially  of  one  fit  to  be  among 
the  prophets  of  the  world,  is  not  like  a  crystal,  a  dead  medium 
of  transmission,  which  once  for  all  deflects  what  it  receives, 
and  has  done  with  it ;  but  a  living  agent,  whose  faculties 
seize  on  every  influence  that  falls  upon  them,  with  actitni  in- 
tenser  as  the  appeal  is  more  awakening.  If,  in  your  silent 
musings,  some  deep  word  of  God  were  to  come  to  you,  some 
tone  of  solemn  and  tender  conviction,  lifting  and  placing  you 
where  you  had  never  stood  before,  would  you  not  think  of  it  ? 
"Would  you  not  adjust  its  place  with  the  faiths  that  were 
dearest  to  you  before  ?  Would  it  not  run  up  into  every  love 
and  hope  you  have,  and  flow  from  your  lips  in  their  speech, 
and  pass  into  your  life  in  their  guise  '?  Instead  of  suspending 
the  natural  faculties,  and  coming  out  of  them  as  it  went  hi, 
it  would  but  quicken  reason,  imagination,  aflection,  and 
multiply   their    combinations   without    yet    perfecting    their 

u 


290  THE  DIVINE  PART  [Book  in, 

resources.  The  flash  of  vision  which  bursts  into  the  mind 
may  itself  be  a  Hght  of  heaven  ;  but  it  can  iUuminate  only 
the  scene  on  which  it  falls  ;  and  while  it  pierces  every  recess, 
it  does  but  touch  with  glory  what  already  lies  around,  the 
thoughts  and  admirations  which  furnish  the  chamber  of  the 
soul,  and  the  far- stretching  ideals  which  spread  as  the  night- 
field  beyond  the  windows  of  her  home.  Come  whence  it  may, 
from  Nature  or  from  Grace,  new  truth,  once  committed  to  the 
mind,  falls  into  fallible  custody  ;  and  the  more  it  possesses 
the  soul,  the  more  will  it  be  worked  into  the  tissue  of  prior 
conceptions,  retinting  their  imagery,  reasoned  into  their 
theory,  flung  into  the  forms  of  their  language ;  so  that  it 
cannot  even  issue  at  first  hand  from  the  inspired  prophet 
himself,  except  on  the  intellectual  air  of  his  time,  and  in  the 
dialect  of  his  people  or  his  school.  The  questions  with  which 
the  age  is  already  charged,  and  towards  which  eager  spirits 
are  bent  with  painful  tension,  are  precisely  those  on  which 
every  hand  will  instantly  turn  the  focus  of  any  fresh  heavenly 
light.  "Is  it  this  mountain,  or  Jerusalem  ?  Is  it  Messiah,  or 
that  prophet  ?  What  about  the  tribute  to  Caesar  ?  How 
shall  we  know  the  end  of  the  world?"  Such  are  the  prob- 
lems, chiefly  creations  of  pure  fancy,  and  all  perishable  with 
their  time,  for  solution  of  which  the  first  witnesses  of  Christ 
rushed  to  his  authority,  and  in  which  his  religion  was  com- 
pelled at  the  outset  to  become  a  partner.  By  this  instant 
crowding  round  of  human  interests  and  transitory  elements 
wherever  a  sacred  centre  rises  into  life,  the  divine  agency  is 
inevitably  lost  from  distinct  and  separate  view,  and  indis- 
tinguishably  mingled  with  the  ferment  and  development  of 
our  humanity.  But  must  we  on  that  account  deny  that  it  is 
there  ?  On  the  contrary,  these  are  its  recipient  conditions : 
the  higher  agency  could  live  on,  only  by  entangling  itself  with 
the  lower  in  every  fibre,  and  making  the  joint  harvest  richer 
from  the  infusion  of  a  purer  sap.  As  the  divine  element  does 
not  suspend  the  human,  the  appearance  of  the  human  does 
not  disprove  the  divine ;  everywhere  in  history,  even  in 
Christendom — their  supreme  product — their  work  is  blended  ; 
like  a  single  drama  by  two  authors,  or  like  the  melody  and 
harmony  of  the  same  piece. 


Chap.  I.]  IN  HUMAN  HISTORY.  291 

This  mingling  of  God's  Spirit  with  man's  in  the  education 
of  our  race  is  illustrated  in  the  singularly  mixed  impression 
which  every  student  must  receive,  when  he  steps  across  the 
line  from  the  ancient  Pagan  civilization  into  the  early  centuries 
of  Christian  history.  If  he  has  heard  of  the  "  Fathers  "  only 
as  they  are  quoted  by  Catholic  divines  ;  if  he  has  dreamed 
only  of  an  age  of  saints  and  martyrs  ;  if  he  has  been  prepos- 
sessed by  the  Protestant  ideal  of  the  primitive  church,  as  the 
spotless  witness  of  heaven  upon  earth,  which  it  is  the  highest 
aim  of  faithful  men  to  reproduce ;  great  must  be  the  shock  of 
his  disappointment  on  finding  himself  in  communion  with 
writers  not  only  barbarous  in  speech  and  rude  in  art,  but  too 
often  puerile  in  conception,  passionate  in  temper,  and  credulous 
in  belief.  The  legends  of  Papias,  the  visions  of  Hernias,  the 
imbecility  of  Irenteus,  the  fury  of  Tertullian,  the  rancour  and 
indelicacy  of  Jerome,  the  stormy  intolerance  of  Augustine, 
cannot  fail  to  startle  and  repel  him ;  and  if  he  turns  to  the 
milder  Hippolytus,  he  is  introduced  to  a  brood  of  thirty 
heresies  which  sadly  dissipate  his  dream  of  the  unity  of  the 
Church.  The  very  questions  on  which  polemic  passion  was 
habitually  expended,  whether  Easter  should  be  computed  by 
the  day  of  the  month  or  of  the  week, — whether  returning 
heretics  should  be  baptized, — whether  it  was  not  impious  to 
believe  in  antipodes, — whether  Christian  women  might  cut 
their  hair, — with  the  perpetual  fire  of  excommunications  and 
intrigues  which  was  maintained  till  they  were  settled  by  some 
stroke  of  power,  must  offend  the  feeling  of  all  but  trained 
ecclesiastics.  Forged  literature,  spurious  miracles,  fanatical 
courting  of  the  mart^'r's  crown,  episcopal  contests  in  Antioch, 
Alexandria,  and  Piome,  councils  where  the  religion  of  truth 
and  love  was  put  to  the  vote  of  rival  antipathies,  leave  upon 
the  mind  the  most  painful  sense  of  shame  and  mortification, 
of  a  sinking  intellectual  civilization  and  a  lost  spiritual  ideal. 
Yet  we  have  only  to  look  a  little  deeper,  to  pass  through  the 
noise  of  the  front  ranks  and  move  quietly  ihrough  the 
Christian  commonalty  behind,  to  recover  from  the  depression 
of  that  first  lialf- view.  Nay,  if  we  return  with  a  larger  pur- 
pose into  this  very  crowd  of  disappointmg  men  and  repulsive 
phenomena. — if,  piercing  through  the  angry  clouds  and  pelt- 

u  2 


292  THE  DIVIDE   PART  [Book  III. 

ing  storms  that  shut  in  the  lower  region  of  their  life,  we  seek 
for  the  ultimate  heaven  in  which  their  true  self  hides — for  the 
supreme  ideas,  the  dominating  ^vorship,  the  expanse  of  inner 
thought  and  trust  in  which  their  characteristic  essence  is  to 
he  found, — we  shall  feel  ourselves  in  the  midst,  not  of  the 
fretful  and  impotent  decrepitude  of  a  decaying  world,  hut  of 
the  passionate  exuberance  of  a  young  enthusiasm,  too  much 
carried  away  by  new  and  sublime  relations  to  be  capable  of 
calmness  and  self-control.  It  soon  becomes  evident  that  the 
very  centre  of  gravity  in  human  interests  has  changed  ;  that 
the  old  Nature-world  is  passing  away,  and  the  sense  of  a 
supernatural  life  is  seizing  the  vacant  place ;  that  while  for 
heathen  thought  the  divine  principle  lay  distributed  and 
buried  in  the  matter  of  the  world,  now,  from  some  marvellous 
cause,  God  and  Man  had  both  of  them  burst  from  the  cei*e- 
ments  of  a  dead  philosophy,  and  stood  face  to  face,  spirit  to 
spirit,  person  to  person,  heedless  of  the  physical  realm,  which 
bends  and  sinks  before  their  mutual  approach,  3'ielding  itself 
to  miracle,  and  ready  even  to  pass  away,  that  they  too  may 
be  alone  together.  This  is  the  grand  revolution  which  we 
find  accomplished  when  we  cross  from  Pagan  on  to  Christian 
ground, — the  transfer  of  life  into  the  immediate  hand  of  the 
living  and  personal  God  ;  and  the  assumption  by  each  indi- 
vidual soul  of  man  of  its  own  answering  personalit}-.  The 
Church  was  everywhere  the  witness  and  the  shelter  of  the 
communion  of  these  two  ;  where  the  humiliations  of  servitude 
could  be  forgot,  the  stains  of  sin  l^e  lightened  by  true  tears, 
and  the  shadows  of  death  vanish  before  the  light  of  eternal 
life.  So  great  was  the  effect  of  this  fresh  power,  that  you 
had  only  to  step  from  the  forum  to  the  Church  to  find  quite  a 
new  edition  of  human  nature,  with  altered  ethical  proportions, 
and  a  reversal  of  established  sentiments  and  manners  ;  in  the 
young  a  reverence  and  simplicity,  in  the  slave  a  dignity  and 
quietude,  in  the  woman  a  modest  self-forgetfulness,  in  the 
man  a  frank  humility,  not  ashamed  to  stoop  to  the  smallest 
service  or  lift  the  voice  in  highest  praj^er ; — all  proclaiming 
that  here  an  ideal  of  character  and  an  order  of  affections  pre- 
vailed, quite  different  from  the  fevered  and  festering  world  on 
which  the  sunshine  glittered  without.     I  do  not  apologize  for 


Chap.  I.]  IN  HUMAN  HISTORY.  293 

the  coarseness  of  Tertullian,  or  the  immodesties  of  Augustine. 
Doubtless,  in  the  desperate  struggle  for  a  higher  purity,  a 
wild  vehemence  of  defiance,  and  absurd  reactionary  asceticism, 
carried  many  a  powerful  genius  beyond  all  bounds  of  reason. 
But  we  are  not  to  charge  the  residuary  corruption  of  a  dis- 
solving society,  brought  by  converts  into  the  Church,  upon 
the  community  which  sought  to  heal  it.  After  all,  and  in  the 
main,  the  purity  was  won.  Domestic  life  fell  under  a  rule 
simple,  severe,  and  sacred  ;  and  in  the  social  relations  of  class 
with  class,  there  arose  a  mutual  fidelity,  a  pity  for  suffering, 
a  relaxation  of  dependence  into  sympathy,  which  reflected  the 
compassion  of  God  in  the  new  affections  among  men.  I  know 
not  how  any  one  can  appreciate  these  great  changes  without 
owning  the  presence  of  an  intense  Divme  agency  ;  or,  if  he 
owns  it,  can  pretend  that  it  is  not  everywhere, — in  priests 
and  people,  from  the  central  altar  to  the  outskirts  of  lay  life, 
— mixed  up  with  the  natural  workings  of  humanity,  and  melted 
down  into  the  indivisible  forms  of  our  weakness  and  our 
strength. 

Such  was  the  blending,  and  such  the  strife,  of  the  ^vvajLiig 
Tov  TTveviLui-og  and  the  da^ivna  r>]c  (jnoicog,  m  the  Church  of 
the  first  four  centuries ;  of  which  the  former  was  unmistak- 
ably the  new  and  cleansing  element,  while  the  latter  was 
but  the  old  and  degenerate  organism  which  it  had  come  to 
heal  and  renew. 

Perhaps,  however,  we  are  turning  our  attention  to  too  late 
a  time,  when  causes  of  corruption  had  already  been  long  at 
work  to  destroy  the  first  simplicity  and  unity  of  the  Christian 
life  ;  and  by  simply  retreating  to  the  fountain-head,  we  may 
leave  these  imperfections  of  thought  and  temper  behind,  and 
see  the  new  dispensation  clear  as  yet  of  every  taint.  Thither 
let  us  ascend,  therefore,  and  approach  as  near  as  we  can  to 
the  very  sources  of  our  religion.  It  can  hardly  be  denied 
that  there  also  we  still  receive  the  same  mixed  impression. 
Is  there  any  one  among  us  to  whom  the  New  Testament  itself 
speaks  with  a  tone  invariably  true  and  sacred,  dispensing 
with  selection,  and  never  compelling  avoidance '?  Do  the 
pictures  which  it  gives  to  us  of  that  first  age  always  win  our 
hearts,  and  make  us  sigh  that  we  were  not  there,  to  hear  the 


294  THE  DIVINE  PART  [Book  III. 

preaching  of  Peter, — to  see  Ananias  and  Sapphira  carried 
out, — to  support  Paul  against  the  factions  at  Corinth, — to  ask 
the  Seer  John  of  the  phials  and  the  dragon  of  his  visions  at 
Patmos  ?  Those  whose  minds  are  not  shut  up  by  an  undis- 
criminating  reverence, — those  to  whom  it  has  become  a 
necessity  to  think  and  feel  as  they  read,  must  surely  own 
their  disappointment  that  the  divine  gleams  which  kindle 
them  are  so  sparse  and  transient,  and  so  soon  quenched  by 
the  mists  of  an  obsolete  world  and  the  dust  of  its  crumbled 
controversies.  There  are  few  more  pathetic  experiences 
than  that  of  the  young  enthusiast,  whose  devotion  has  con- 
secrated every  page  of  Scripture,  but  whose  intellect  wakes  to 
read  it  critically  at  last ;  and  who  has  to  reduce  his  pro- 
phecies into  history, — to  find  the  drama  of  the  parables 
played  out  long  ago  in  Galilee  and  Jerusalem, — to  discover 
that  the  Last  Judgment,  which  art  and  poetry  have  solem- 
nized in  vain,  is  the  lost  dream  of  a  world  that  has  outlived 
its  end  ;  and  whose  sacred  thirst,  increasing  with  the  fever  of 
disappointment,  has  to  retreat  to  fountains  ever  narrowing, 
till  he  has  drunk  so  often  of  the  beatitudes,  the  parting  dis- 
courses, and  the  remaining  dews  of  scattered  sweetness  here 
and  there,  that  he  goes  for  a  draught  of  fuller  refreshment  to 
a  Kempis  or  Tauler.  To  whichever  of  the  primitive  versions 
of  Christianity,  contained  in  the  New  Testament,  we  turn,  the 
human  admixtures  are  instantly  felt.  Paul,  our  earliest 
witness,  weaves  the  living  fibre  of  a  true  spiritual  philosophy 
into  a  texture  of  rabbinical  dialectic,  from  whose  windings  he 
himself  cannot  always  emerge  into  the  clear.  Firm  as  his 
grasp  is  of  truths,  unspoken  before,  yet  ever  present  in  the 
deepest  moral  consciousness  of  man,  that  to  live  in  yourself, 
however  rightly,  is  to  live  in  prison,  and  to  go  captive  to  a 
diviner  is  alone  to  be  free, — and  glorious  as  are  his  outbursts 
of  thanksgiving  for  an  emancipated  nature,  that  has  escaped 
the  ccntlict  of  sin,  though  not  the  thorn  of  suffering,  we 
sometimes  wish  that  he  would  let  them  speak  for  themselves, 
instead  of  trying  to  extort  them  from  cross-questionings  of 
Hagar  and  Ishmael,  or  striking  again  the  desert  rock  to 
make  them  flow ;  and  sometimes  fear  lest,  in  his  exulting 
scorn  of  conquered  sin,  he  should  negligently  guard  the  ways 


Chap.  I.]  IN  HUMAN  HISTORY.  29s 

of  return  possiljle  to  that  subtle  power.  And  though  no 
writings  bear  more  strongly  than  his  the  impress  of  profound 
and  disinterested  conviction,  hoAV  is  it  possible  not  to  be 
disturbed  by  his  liability  to  paroxysms  of  ecstasy,  to  look 
regretfully  at  his  flight  to  the  third  heaven,  and  to  wish  he 
had  not  heard  those  unspeakable  words  ?  If  from  his  Gentile 
gospel  we  turn  to  the  teaching  of  the  Judaic  twelve,  we  are 
indeed  relieved  from  the  theosophic  strain  of  the  Pauline 
reasoning,  and  left  upon  the  plainer  ground  of  the  elder 
monotheism,  with  a  Christ  who  is  but  "  a  man  approved  of 
God  "  on  earth  and  reserved  by  him  in  heaven.  But  then, 
in  holding  to  the  simplest,  they  cling  to  the  narrowest  too, 
and  by  setting  themselves  against  the  daring  Pauline  revela- 
tion in  thought  and  act,  they  miss  the  universality  and 
spiritual  depth  of  the  religion,  and  leave  Christianity  a  mere 
interior  variety  of  the  Israelitish  history.  An  horizon  bounded 
in  the  Past  by  fancied  promises  to  David,  or  even  forecasts  of 
Moses,  and  in  the  future  by  the  apocalyptic  scenery  of  the 
returning  Nero's  fall  before  the  returning  Christ,  and  the 
substitution  of  the  New  Jerusalem  for  the  perished  Piome, — 
an  horizon  which  therefore  shut  up  human  history  at  once, 
and  turned  men  then  living  into  the  millennium,  or  out  of 
it, — can  have  no  serious  interest  for  us  who  belong  to  a  still 
persistent  and  expanding  humanity :  and  it  is  no  wonder  that 
we,  whom  it  never  contemplated,  look  on  its  wild  and  rugged 
pictures  as  on  a  mythology  foreign  to  ourselves,  and  listen  to 
the  hymns  that  mingle  with  its  drama,  as  to  a  sul^lime  poetry, 
the  dream-voices  of  man}-  waters,  murmuring  from  afai'. 
The  Book  of  Revelation  embodies  a  form  of  apostohc 
Christianity  which .  if  it  had  been  Ihiall}'  ascendant,  could 
have  had  no  attraction,  except  as  a  curious  past  phenomenon, 
for  any  future  age.  It  owes  its  very  preservation  only  to  the 
forbearance  of  the  Gentile  universalism  which  it  denounces  , 
and  remains  to  engage  the  fancy,  to  baffle  the  predictions, 
and  alarm  the  fears,  of  those  who  are  blind  alike  to  the  early 
history  and  the  everlasting  spirit  of  their  religion.  If,  again, 
we  open  the  page  of  the  Gospels  and  approach  the  person  of 
Christ  himself,  no  reverent  prepossessions  can  secure  us  from 
painfully   mixed   impressions.      How   broken,    and  at   times 


296  THE   DIVINE  PART  [Book  III. 

distorted,  is  the  image  Avhicli  the  record  presents  !  Ghmpses 
of  divine  beauty,  lost  as  soon  as  seen  ;  openings  of  insight 
immeasurably  deep,  caught  by  a  flash  that  leaves  the  denser 
darkness ;  tones  of  majestic  trust  and  tenderness,  that  float 
upon  a  momentary  wind,  yet  linger  on  the  heart  for  ever ; 
a  form  of  grace  and  power,  free  and  firm  because  at  disposal 
of  a  highest  Unseen  Love,  gentle  and  flowing  because  sur- 
rendered to  lowliest  service  ;  yet  with  many  an  adjunct  which 
it  is  impossible  to  bring  into  the  outline,  and  many  a  look 
that  will  not  sit  upon  that  face :  such  are  the  fragmentary 
features  which  alternate,  as  it  seems  to  me,  our  joy  and 
our  discontent;  and  which  show  that  we  have  no  sun- 
portrait  of  the  reality,  but  only  a  pieced  picture,  half  memory 
that  is  dim,  and  half  tradition  that  is  blind.  Everywhere 
the  individual  personality  is  confused  by  identification  with  a 
Messianic  ideal ;  nothing  is  left  to  speak  in  its  own  concrete 
simplicity  ;  all  is  turned  to  some  ofiicial  or  evidential  account. 
If  Jesus  quotes  the  prophets,  the  historians  twist  them  into 
some  incredible  application  to  himself.  If  his  path  is  strewed 
with  deeds  of  mercy,  and  his  calm  look  quiets  many  a 
troubled  mind,  it  is  that  the  demons  are  disturbed  at  his 
approach  and  cry  aloud  in  witness  that  he  is  Christ.  If  he 
teaches  the  uttermost  self-forgetfulness  and  pure  imitation  of 
God,  he  must  be  made,  within  a  few  lines,  to  balance  this  by 
the  directest  appeal  to  the  hopes  and  fears  of  retribution. 
If  he  wishes  the  temple  and  the  priests  away,  that  he  may 
deal  with  the  naked  human  spirit,  and  in  a  trice  raise  up  an 
imperishable  temple  not  made  with  hands,  he  is  thought  to 
be  talking  of  his  own  body,  instead  of  the  soul  of  humanity. 
From  beginning  to  end  there  is  every  trace  of  a  divine  life 
once  realized  in  history,  but  partially  lost  through  the  per- 
sistent self-assertion  of  human  theory  and  doctrine.  The 
two  elements  thus  given  to  us  we  can  therefore  know  from 
one  another  by  no  mechanical  severance,  by  no  chemical 
precipitation.  We  cannot  say,  '  This  doctrine  is  divine,  be- 
cause it  is  found  in  a  canonical  book,  and  that  is  human, 
because  confined  to  the  apocrypha  : '  or,  '  This  moral  rule  is 
binding,  because  enforced  by  Peter  or  by  Paul,  and  that  is 
open  to  question,  as  given  only  by  Apollos  or  Ijy  Clement : ' 


Chap.  I.]  IN  HUMAN  HISTORY.  297 

or  '  This  argument,  is  demonstrative,  because  attributed  to 
Jesus  himself,  and  that  is  subject  to  doubt,  as  reported  only 
of  Stephen  or  of  Timothy.'  Neither  Church  nor  Scripture 
can  serve  on  these  easy  terms  as  our  "  Eule  of  faith  and 
practice ;  "  and  yet  both  may  provide  adequate  guidance  to 
the  highest  truth  and  goodness.  To  reach  it,  however,  with- 
out use  of  the  discriminative  faculties,  and  be  carried  blindfold 
into  the  eternal  light,  is  impossible.  Other  than  mixed 
materials,  possibilities  of  true  or  false,  of  good  or  ill,  transient 
or  everlasting,  are  nowhere  offered  to  our  acceptance;  and 
"we  have  not  simply  to  takcy  but  always  to  choose.  And  the 
tests  by  which  we  distinguish  the  fictitious  from  the  real,  the 
wrong  from  the  right,  the  unlovely  from  the  beautiful,  the 
j)rofane  from  the  sacred,  are  to  be  found  within,  and  not 
without,  in  the  methods  of  just  thought,  the  instincts  of  pure 
conscience,  and  the  aspirations  of  unclouded  reason.  These 
are  the  livmg  powers  which  constitute  our  affinity  with  God, 
and  render  what  to  Him  is  eternally  true  and  good,  true  and 
good  to  us  as  well ;  and  their  selecting  touch  alone  can  part 
asunder  the  entangled  crowd  of  acts  and  things,  and  from 
their  conflicting  meanings  single  out  for  us  the  idea  which  is 
His,  and  the  spirit  which  He  loves. 

In  applying  these  tests  to  the  materials  of  early  Christian 
history,  we  shall  see  considerable  portions  of  them  fall  away 
to  the  account  of  the  human  agent's  store  of  local  preposses- 
sion and  temporar}^  error,  while  the  divine  essence  is  concen- 
trated in  a  spiritual  focus,  simj)le  but  intense.  But  when  this 
severance  has  been  effected,  it  would  be  hasty  to  dismiss  the 
discarded  elements  as  mere  refuse,  out  of  all  relation  to  the 
Divine  Will.  Eor,  though  they  may  be  false  as  attached  to 
the  new  religion,  and  fail  of  the  end  contemplated  by  its 
teachers,  they  are  not  inoperative,  and  will  produce  other  ends, 
like  all  active  beliefs,  false  as  well  as  true.  These  effects,  un- 
designed by  men,  must  be  referred  to  the  causality  of  God. 
They  will  turn  up  in  the  courses  of  the  world,  and  would  have 
done  so,  though  there  had  been  no  new  infusion  of  his  Spirit 
to  be  confused  by  their  alloy.  The  illusions  of  men,  which 
disappoint  their  expectations  and  frustrate  their  purposes, 
such  as  the  notion  of  demoniacal  possession,  the  outlook  for  a 


298  THE  DIVINE  PART  [Book  III. 

near  end  of  the  world,  and  the  trust  m  the  supernatural  virtues 
of  rites  and  sacraments,  are  influences  of  great  power  in  human 
affairs,  and  work  out  results  which  cannot  be  foreign  to  the 
scheme  of  Providence  in  history.  Our  errors  are  controlled, 
our  blindness  disarmed,  by  God's  omniscience,  and  their 
erratic  lines  deflected  into  place  within  his  diagram  of  uni- 
versal good.  Just  as  the  animal  instincts  continually  provide 
for  the  exigencies  of  descendants  they  will  never  see,  and  con- 
form in  the  dark  to  the  conditions  of  a  season  beyond  their 
date,  so  do  our  impulses  and  passions,  working  in  an  imper- 
fect light  of  thought,  move  on  paths  which  they  know  not, 
and  realize  ends  which  they  never  contemplated.  Through 
some  misdirection  or  infirmity,  most  of  the  larger  agencies  in 
history  have  failed  to  reach  their  own  ideal,  yet  have  accom- 
plished revolutions  greater  and  more  beneficent ;  the  con- 
quests of  Alexander,  the  empire  of  Eome,  the  Crusades,  the 
ecclesiastical  persecutions,  the  monastic  asceticisms,  the  mis- 
sionary zeal,  of  Christendom,  have  all  played  a  momentous 
part  in  the  drama  of  the  world,  yet  a  part  which  is  a  surprise 
to  each.  Nay,  what  is  the  very  principle  of  that  law  of  Evolu- 
tion which  we  have  learned  to  take  as  our  clew  through  the 
history  of  the  universe  and  man  ?  that  each  living  being,  in 
simply  following  its  own  impulse  in  the  "  struggle  for  life," 
helps  to  build  up  a  constitution  of  organic  nature,  not  only 
replete  with  adaptations  and  interdependencies  infinitely  varied 
and  refined,  but  secure  of  progressive  development  through 
higher  stages  of  physical  growth,  of  skilled  instinct,  of  reflec- 
tive intelligence,  and  of  moral  elevation.  If  we  acknowledge 
that  birds  and  insects,  without  knowing  what  they  do,  could 
never  alight  on  infallible  provision  for  an  unsuspected  future, 
were  not  their  activities  directed  by  a  foresight  other  than 
their  own,  how  much  more  must  we  feel  that  when  men,  not 
simply  blind  to  the  right  goal,  but  straying  towards  the  wrong, 
are  nevertheless  secretly  deflected  into  the  curve  of  truth  and 
beauty,  and  made  involuntary  instruments  of  an  issue  sub- 
limer  than  their  boldest  dreams,  it  can  only  be  through  the 
controlling  presence  of  a  Eeason  and  a  Will  transcendent  and 
divine.  Here,  then,  in  the  sphere  of  ends  which,  absent  from 
human  intention,  yet  obviously  lie  within  the  embrace  of  an 


Chap.  I.]  IN  HUMAN  HISTORY.  299 

intellectual  system  of  the  world,  we  have  a  further  test,  no 
longer  mtuitive,  but  susceptible  of  outward  application,  for 
discriminating  the  divine  and  human  agencies  in  history. 
Instances  of  its  use  will  not  be  wanting,  as  the  story  of 
Christendom  unfolds.  But  the  inner  tests  must  be  our  chief 
dependence  in  tracing  our  way  along  the  fragments  of  a  path 
to  the  fountain  head  of  that  marvellous  and  fertilizing  power. 


300 


CHAPTER  11. 

WHAT    ARE    "  NA.TUEAL  "    AND    "  REVE^VLED    RELIGION?'' 

If  either  Church  or  Scripture  could  for  a  moment  be  con- 
stituted a  sacrarium  for  sechiding  all  that  is  simply  divine, 
the  first  movement  of  historical  change,  through  the  play  of 
finite  powers,  would  break  the  holy  bounds,  and  interfuse  the 
thoughts  of  God  and  man.  Nothing  can  arise  on  the  field  of 
history  that  is  not  the  j^roduct  of  them  both  ;  nor  can  they  be 
shut  up,  apart  from  each  other,  in  any  portion  whether  of 
space  or  time.  Are  the  beginnings  human  ?  The  divine 
will  not  be  wanting  in  their  ends.  Are  the  beginnings  divine  ? 
There  will  be  plenty  of  human  outgrowth  ere  the  end,  it  may 
be  of  strength  and  beauty,  or  of  sickly  and  degenerate  develop- 
ment. For  the  fallen  angels  are  not  the  only  heavenly 
natures  that  "  do  not  keep  their  first  estate."  Whatever  is 
"born  of  God,"  simply  because  it  lires,  is  ever  on  the  move: 
be  it  a  light  for  thought  or  a  rule  for  will,  it  may  be  given  to 
a  rudimentary  intelligence,  on  purpose  to  be  outgrown ;  or, 
it  may  fall  into  unfaithful  custody,  to  be  turned  to  corrupt 
account ;  or,  it  may  be  genially  received,  and  quickened,  as  a 
seed  of  grace,  into  ulterior  truth  and  good,  which  transcend 
and  supersede  it.  There  can  be  no  surer  characteristic  of  a 
divine  dispensation,  than  that  it  lifts  its  disciples  to  a  position 
higher  than  the  level  from  which  it  originally  spoke,  and  so 
widens  their  horizon  as  to  dwarf  the  little  circle  which  then 
fenced  them  round. 

The  free  handling  of  the  ancient  Law  and  its  teachers  ' '  of 
old  times  "  in  the  sermon  on  the  mount,  and  the  whole  preach- 
ing of  Jesus,  might  have  opened  the  eyes  of  his  personal 
followers  to  these  things.  But  it  was  reserved  for  the  apostle 
who  never  heard  his  voice  to  treat  the  ancient  "  oracles  of 
God  "  as  by  no  means  final,  to  assume  that  the  Revelation  of 
one  age  might  be  the  superstition  of  another,  to  declare  the 


Chap.  1 1.  J    ''NATURAL"   AND  ''REVEALED   RELIGION:'     301 

Law  "  the  schoolmaster  to  l)ring  us  to  Christ,"  to  claim  escape 
Irom  an  inherited  Divine  institution  into  spiritual  religion, 
with  free  permission  to  throw  away  canonical  theology  and  go 
straight  to  the  living  reality  of  God,   as  if  Moses  had  never 
been.     Has  not  "  God  revealed  his  Son  in  him  ?  "     And  now 
that  he  "  knows  God,  or  rather  is  known  of  Him,"  he  has  no 
more  to  do  with  "  the  weak  and  beggarly  elements  "   whicli 
have   hitherto   held   him    "in   bondage."      What   are  these 
*'  elements  "  which  he  visits  with  such  contempt  ?     They  are 
the  very  "  Law  given  to  the  fathers,"  the  words  that  burst 
from  the  thunders  of  Sinai,  which  made  the  nation  "  a  holy 
people,"  and  Jerusalem  the  hope  of  the  whole  world.     And 
why  does  he  fling  these  things  aside  ?     Is  it  because  he  thinks 
them  false  ?     No  :  but  because  he  has  learnt  a  directer  way 
to  the  truth  they  hold  and  to  truth  l)eyond  it  :  because  the 
time  has  come  when  the  life  of  God  is  its  own  witness  and  is 
accessible  anew :    when  the  human  spirit,  now  clearer  and 
larger,  feels  after  Him  not  in  vain  :  and  his  Spirit,  finding  the 
latch  lifted  in  many  a  mind,  steals  in,  and  speaks  the  secret 
of  his  presence.     The  apostle  was  accused  of  apostasy  from 
revealed  religion,  because  he  put  the  whole  Mosaic  economy 
into  a  parenthesis  and  resumed  the  world's  history  as  if  it 
were    not   there.      He   was   denounced    as   a   latitudinarian, 
because  he  let  the  Pagan  come  to  the  living  God  without 
asking  leave  of  the  Jew  and  taking  Zion  hy  the  way.     He  was 
set  down  as  a  "  mere  Theist,"  because  he  said  that  Abraham 
and  the  pious  men  of  old  times  had  direct  relations  with  the 
Most  High,  and  so  might  we  have.     And  he  was  charged  with 
bare  negative  teaching,  because  this  was  the  chief  burthen  of 
his  gospel — that  the  divine  light  was  impartial,  the  divine  wor- 
ship spiritual,  and  regenerate  humanity  the  inmost  resort  of 
the  divine  glory. 

In  every  age,  and  not  least  in  our  own,  the  same  treatment 
awaits  those  who  bid  men  look  straight  into  the  clear  heaven, 
instead  of  peering  at  it  only  through  the  cloister  window,  so 
dark  with  age,  and  rich  with  the  colours  of  the  past,  that  it 
uses  the  sunshine  but  to  paint  the  figures  of  the  saints.  Every 
veil  which  lias  once  transmitted  a  sacred  rav,  everv  medium 
of  expression,  by  word  or  symbol,  frequented  by  the  soul  in 


302  DIVINE  AUTHORITY.  [Book  III. 

her  devout  ascents,  becomes  so  consecrate  that  a  frightened 
piety  will  not  dispense  with  it,  even  to  stand  face  to  face  with 
the  living  God, 

But  though  we  cannot  sever  the  Divine  thought  and  action 
from  the  human,  so  as  to  isolate  it  in  a  literature  or  an  insti- 
tution, may  it  not  be  possible  to  distinguish  the  two  concep- 
tions, notwithstanding  their  admixture  in  fact  ?  especialty  if, 
to  simplify  the  question,  we  limit  our  attention  to  the  one 
field  of  experience  which  we  are  trying  to  explore,  viz.,  the 
grounds  of  our  religious  knowledge  and  beliefs  ?  In  the 
method  of  acquiring  these  and  the  tenure  by  which  we  hold 
them,  there  is  a  familiar  distinction  drawn,  for  the  express 
pm'pose  of  solving  this  problem,  viz.,  between  Natural  and 
Revealed  religion  :  and  if  we  can  give  exactitude  to  the  mean- 
ing of  these  terms  and  exhibit  their  true  relation,  it  may 
clear  our  way,  and  save  us  from  some  prevalent  illusions. 

Shall  we  say,  "  Natural  religion  is  that  in  which  man  finds 
God:  Revealed  religion  is  that  in  which  God  finds  man?" 
This  surely  is  the  distinction  which  the  phrases  are  intended 
to  mark :  on  the  one  hand,  the  ascending  effort  of  the  human 
faculties  towards  their  Supreme  Object :  on  the  other.  His 
spontaneous  descent  into  the  field  of  human  apprehension. 
The  knowledge  of  him  is  the  reward  of  thought,  the  crown  of 
long  endeavour,  in  the  first  case :  but  in  the  last,  the  surprise 
of  an  unsought  light,  that  illumines  what  is  in  us  but  is  not 
ours.  The  Agents  therefore  are  different  in  the  two  cases, 
and  proceed  from  opposite  termini,  with  movements  in  inverse 
directions. 

If  this  be  so,  we  may  next  ask  why  the  first  is  called 
"  natural "  religion,  a  term  which  does  not  happily  balance 
the  epithet  "  revealed."  "  Nature,"  in  its  original  and 
largest  sense,  means  the  whole  realm  of  things  that  are  horn, 
that  enter  and  quit  the  field  of  existence ;  and,  as  naming  the 
sphere  of  phenomena,  stands  opposed  to  God,  the  eternal  ground 
and  cause  of  all  that  sweeps  across  the  stage.  In  this  view, 
the  religion  of  nature  is  that  which  we  gather  from  the  world 
of  appearances,  from  the  changes  with  which  time  and  space 
are  populous.  If  they  speak  to  us  not  simply  of  themselves, 
or  of  antecedents  like  themselves,  but    as  expressions  of  a 


Chap.  II.]    ''NATURAL''  AND  ''REVEALED   RELIGION"     30 


j^j 


higher  cause ;  if  their  laws  seem  not  to  have  scraml)led  into 
equihhrium,  but  to  take  the  dispositions  of  intending  Thought ; 
if  their  order,  which  when  recorded  makes  our  science,  and 
when  copied  makes  our  arts,  must  be,  we  think,  an  intehectual 
organism  in  its  primal  seat ;  if  their  beauty  e^^erywhere,  and 
their  play  of  light  and  shadow  upon  human  life,  which  press 
from  the  soul  the  tones  of  poetry,  report  to  us  a  creative 
artist  who  has  set  the  strain  ;  if,  in  short,  as  we  look  around 
us,  we  find  a  passage  from  the  world  to  a  Divine  Mind  as 
author  of  the  world,  we  are  disciples  of  "  Natural  religion." 
The  phrase  marks  simply  the  source  whence  the  impression 
comes, — the  objects  in  contemplating  which  it  is  forced  upon 
us  ;  and  whether  we  are  able  to  give  a  rational  account  of  it, 
or  it  streams  in  upon  us  we  know  not  how,  from  the  very 
aspect  of  the  earth  and  sky,  it  falls  under  the  same  desig- 
nation. 

We  speak,  however,  under  the  same  word  "  Xafure,''  of 
something  else  than  the  external  universe  in  face  of  which  we 
stand.  We  appropriate  the  term  to  ourselves,-  and  talk  of 
"  human  nature,'"  when  we  wish  to  mark  the  distinguishing 
endowments  and  tendencies  of  man.  He  too  is  a  creature 
horn,  and  bringing  up  into  this  scene  of  things  a  constitution 
or  system  of  faculties,  which  at  once  open  and  limit  his  range. 
He  belongs  therefore  to  the  same  field  which  other  transitor}- 
beings  occupy,  and  takes  his  place  as  an  object  with  the  groups 
of  animals  and  the  catalogues  of  stars.  His  phenomena  must 
be  added  on  to  theirs  in  order  to  make  up  the  book  of  the 
world  ;  and  must  be  taken  into  account  by  one  who,  through 
the  world,  would  seek  to  know  its  author  and  its  end.  But 
when  we  speak  of  "  the  natural  religion  of  man,"  we  use  the 
phrase  in  a  different  sense  ;  to  denote  the  religion,  not  in 
wliich  man  is  the  object  thought  of,  but  in  which  he  is  the 
thinking  subject, — which  is  the  characteristic  expression  of 
his  mind,  and  without  which  he  would  be  an  exception  to  the 
rule  of  our  humanity.  In  describing  God  as  apprehended 
thus,  we  refer  to  the  faculties  we  know  him  with,  not  to  the 
vestiges  we  know  him  1)y.  Phrases  there  are  which  lie  be- 
tween and  look  both  ways.  If  we  say  that  the  ancient  philo- 
sophers  were  left  to  the   "  lirjht    of  nature,''  we  may  mean 


304  DIVINE  AUTHORITY.  [Book  ill. 

either  the  light  of  their  own  nature,  or  the  luminous  characters 
written  on  the  heavens  and  the  earth.  In  the  one  case,  we 
regard  tlieir  religion  chiefly  as  depending  on  their  personal 
and  moral  characteristics,  as  giving  direction  to  their  rev- 
erential faith  :  in  the  other,  we  look  on  it  as  intellectually 
gathered  by  survey  of  the  realm  of  Law. 

Take  it  in  what  sense  you  will,  whether  as  collected  by 
inference  from  external  nature,  or  as  worked  out  by  medita- 
tion within  our  own.  Natural  Eeligion  is  a  human  elaboration 
which  sets  more  or  fewer  steps  between  ourselves  and  God. 
It  is  a  method  of  mediate  knowledge,  carrying  us,  by  suc- 
cessive stages  of  advance,  out  of  the  finite  into  the  infinite : 
there  are  media  without,  as  we  pass  the  facts  of  the  world  in 
review  before  us,  and  move  from  the  narrower  through  tho 
wider  order  to  the  cause  which  embraces  all :  there  are  media 
within,  as  our  own  reason  weaves  up  feeling  and  perception 
into  its  premisses,  and  so  marshals  its  premisses  as  to  con- 
quer its  conclusion.  So  far  forth  as  God  naturalizes  himself 
in  order  to  be  discerned,  constructs  a  cosmos  to  be  the  mirror 
of  his  thought,  covers  it  with  greater  and  lesser  circles  of 
intersecting  laws,  executed  by  a  delegated  physiology  from 
within,  he  is  not  j't'esented,  but  reiiresentecl :  the  knowledge  of 
him  belongs  to  the  religion  of  nature ;  it  requires  that  we 
know  another  object,  or  series  of  objects,  en  the  way  to  an 
apprehension  of  Him.  Every  interposed  term  requires  a 
corresponding  step  of  reasoning  in  us ;  the  final  inference 
attenuating  its  securit}-  by  every  link  in  the  catena.  True  it 
is  that  God's  agency  in  outward  nature  is  just  as  immediate 
as  in  the  soul  of  man  ;  its  forces,  though  imagined  to  be  his 
deputies,  being  simply  his  modes  of  energy,  so  that  in  spread- 
ing out  the  universe  he  is  showing  himself.  But  it  is  on  it, 
and  not  on  tis,  that  his  physical  action  is  immediate,  and  it 
would  still  have  its  object  and  its  field,  though  we  were  away. 
The  material  world  is  interposed  to  bridge  the  interval  between 
his  living  thought  and  ours  ;  and  one  and  the  other  must  cross 
before  they  meet. 

This  is  the  feature  which  has  made  men  sigh  for  something 
more  assured  than  natural  religion,  and  has  left  its  chaste 
and  modest  temple  to  gather  only  a  sparse  company  of  wor- 


Chap.  II.]    "NATURAL''  AND  ''REVEALED  RELIGION."    2>o 


J^3 


shippers  :  where,  it  is  true,  you  may  number  many  a  pale  and 
lofty  brow,  many  a  pure  and  noble  will,  and  see  hung  upon 
the  walls  some  crowns  of  highest  martyrdom,  and  lyres  of 
sweetest  song  ;  but  whence  spirits  more  fervid  or  less  choice 
turn  aside  to  crowd  around  some  bolder  prophet  and  kneel  in 
worship  of  deeper  tone.  Thus  to  reach  God  by  effort  and 
discovery  of  ours  is  esteemed  too  great  an  act  for  our 
humanity ;  and,  since  it  must  be  by  mediate  reasonings  on 
mediate  phenomena,  is  too  precarious  for  yearning  hearts  to 
bear.  "If  he  be  really  there  "  (they  cry),  "  behind  the  folds 
of  the  visible  order,  will  he  throw  all  the  hazards  of  the 
search  on  us,  and  coldly  wait  until  we  have  found  the  eternal 
secret  ?  Will  he  not  rather  take  the  initiative  himself,  make 
us  his  object,  and  so  enter  our  mind  as  to  be  immediately 
known  ?  "  Such  is  the  feeling  which  has  made  men  impatient 
of  the  bare  probabilities  of  natural  religion,  and  prepared 
them  to  look  for  assurance  more  direct.  To  answer  that  feel- 
ing, the  one  condition  which  the  desired  Eevelation  must 
fulfil  is  plainly  this :  it  must  be  immediate,  \i\mg  God  with 
living  man.  Spirit  present  with  spirit ;  knowing  Him, 
indeed,  but  rather  "  being  known  of  Him."  The  whole  road 
of  human  ascent  must  be  cut  awa}^  and  the  painful  climbing 
spared ;  or  if,  besides,  any  ladder  now  should  be  left,  it  must 
not  matter  whether  it  stands  upon  the  plain,  or  its  visionary 
steps  are  the  air- stations  of  a  dream  ;  since  they  are  but  for 
the  feet  of  men  and  angels,  and  are  dispensed  with  by  Him 
whose  presence  makes  earth  as  well  as  sky  the  very  house  of 
God  and  gate  of  heaven.  "Where  the  Agent  is  Divine,  and 
the  recipient  human,  there  can  be  nothing  for  the  mind  to  do 
but  to  let  the  light  How  in,  and  by  the  lustre  of  its  presence 
turn  each  common  thought  to  sanctity  :  the  disclosure  must  be 
self-disclosure;  tlie  ewidence,  self- ei'id en ce ;  the  apprehension, 
as  we  say,  intuitive ;  something  given,  and  not  found.  Here 
then  we  have  the  essential  distinction, — the  only  one  which  we 
can  not  merely  state  but  verify,  between  natural  and  revealed 
religion, — that  the  one  is  what  is  worked  out  by  man  through 
processes  which  he  can  count  and  justify :  the  otber  is  there 
by  gift  of  God,  so  close  to  the  soul,  so  folded  in  with  the  very 
centre  of  the  personal  life,  that  though  it  ever  s]3eaks  it  cau- 

X 


J 


06  DIVINE   AUTHORITY,  [Book  III. 


not  be  spoken  of ;  though  it  shines  everywhere  it  can  be  looked 
at  nowhere  ;  and  because  presupposed  as  reahty  it  evades 
criticism  as  a  phenomenon. 

But  does  not  this  reduction  of  Eevelation  to  Intuition  carry 
us  too  far,  and  involve  us  in  the  idea  of  a  revealed  Science  as 
well  as  a  revealed  Keligion  ?  For  we  certainly  have  intuitive 
apprehensions  of  a  reality  in  other  fields  than  that  of  spiritual 
truth.  Our  beliefs  in  Space  and  Time,  the  bases  of  geometry 
and  number,  in  Substance  and  Causality,  assumed  in  Physics 
and  embodied  in  the  structure  of  all  language,  are  no  less 
immediate  than  the  directest  consciousness  of  God.  Are  they 
then  entitled  to  the  same  place,  as  a  communion  between  the 
Divine  mind  and  the  human  ?  To  a  certain  extent  they  are  so ; 
but  not  without  an  important  qualification.  They  have  pre- 
cisely the  same  claim  to  absolute  trust,  and,  in  exercising  that 
trust,  we  ground  ourselves  simply  on  the  veracity  of  God :  his 
report  to  our  perceptive  and  intellectual  capacities  we  accept 
just  as  it  is,  and  use  as  a  datum  for  all  that  we  have  to  learn. 
Only,  what  we  get  to  know  by  means  of  them  is  not  God 
])er  se,  but  the  external  world:  they  are  the  conditions  under 
which  we  interpret  our  place  and  life  as  creatures  of  Nature,  and 
not  our  spiritual  relations  as  personal  beings  ;  and  these  alone 
it  is  which  constitute  the  object  matter  of  religious  know- 
ledge ;  and  beyond  this  sphere  it  is  not  usual  to  carry  the 
word  Eevelation.  Else,  these  primary  cognitions,  simply  as 
data  at  first  hand,  might  well  be  called  intellectual  revela- 
tions ;  and  as  not  found  among  phenomena  of  nature,  but 
standing  as  prior  conditions  of  them  all,  might  even  aspire 
to  the  epithet  supernatural.  But  as  this  also  has  been  appro- 
priated to  religious  use,  the  equivalent  Greek  word,  metaphi/si- 
cal  is  accepted  instead.  The  reason  of  this  jealous  guarding 
of  its  special  terms  on  the  part  of  religion  lies  in  the 
difference  of  its  object  of  knowledge  from  that  on  which 
science  rests.  The  field  which  is  entered  through  the 
scientific  intuitions  is  the  field  of  Necessity,  either  eternal 
and  unchangeable  as  the  nexus  of  mathematical  properties, 
or  simply  durable  as  empirically  unchanged,  like  the  persistent 
sequences  of  physical  law  ;  and  if  this  field  were  all,  its  lesson 
might  be  delivered  and  learned,  from  end  to  end,  without  a 


Chap.  II.]    ''NATURAL''  AXD  ''REVEALED  RELIGION"     307 

conception  bej'ond  this  necessity,  or  a  suspicion  of  the  higher 
infinitude  which  hes  around  our  prison  walls.  The  field,  on 
the  other  hand,  which  is  entered  through  the  intuitions  of 
conscience,  is  the  fie\(\.  of  freedom,  of  j)ossihUity,  of  alternatives, 
i.e.,  of  spiritual  action,  amenable,  not  to  natural  antecedents, 
but  to  preferential  obligation,  carrying  in  it  the  relation  of 
mind  obeying  and  mind  commanding,  l)oth  on  the  ground  of 
a  common  righteousness.  Here  we  are  ushered  by  our  own 
supernatural  life  (i.e.,  life  beyond  the  range  of  Nature- 
necessity)  into  cognizance  of  our  supernatural  affinities  :  we 
walk  in  the  presence,  not  simply  of  animals  in  the  same  cage, 
but  of  spirits  other  than  our  own ;  with  whom  we  pass  from 
creatures  of  nature  into  children  of  God.  This  is  the  specialty 
which  properly  reserves  for  the  moral  intuitions  alone  among 
the  cases  of  immediate  knowledge,  an  identification  with  re- 
vealed Eelifiion.  It  maybe  true  that  God  is  not  less  immediately 
present  with  us  in  the  energies  of  nature  than  in  the  authority 
'Of  conscience.  But  it  is  an  external  and  dynamic  presence, 
simply  executant  of  what  is  predetermined  to  be,  and,  as 
such,  might  as  well  be  purely  automatic  ;  and  is  short  of  the 
volitional  and  personal  character  which  alone  entitles  to  the 
name  of  God.  The  world  is  no  doubt  "  immediate  "  both  to 
him  and  to  us  :  to  him,  however,  as  effect,  to  us  as  cause  ;  it 
therefore  lies  between,  revealiwj  itself  as  here,  and  only 
implying  Him  as  there. 

From  this  analysis  liow  several  inferences  corrective  of 
prevalent  illusions. 

1 .  If  Revealed  Eeligion  is  an  immediate  divine  knowledge, 
it  is  strictly  personal  and  individual,  and  must  be  born  anew 
in  every  mind.  It  admits  of  no  condition  separating  the 
Self-revealer  from  the  recipient  Soul  :  it  is  a  light  for  which 
they  two  alone  are  needful,  alone  are  possible.  "  The  secret 
of  God  "  is  with  the  "  pure  in  heart,"  taken  one  by  one.  As 
many  minds  as  there  are  that  know  him  at  first  hand,  so 
many  revealing  acts  have  there  been ;  and  as  many  as  know 
him  only  at  second  hand  are  strangers  to  revelation  :  they 
may  hold,  or  think  they  hold,  what  has  been  revealed  to 
another ;  but,  in  passing  througli  media  to  them,  it  has 
become  Natural  religion.     Take  away  the  fresh  Divine  initia- 

X  2 


3o8  DIVINE  AUTHORITY.  [Eook  III. 

tive,  and  the  immediate  apprehension  wliich  it  gives  cannot 
pass  latcralli)  from  man  to  man  :  no  one,  in  the  absence  of 
God's  Hving  touch,  can  put  us  into  communion  with  him,  and 
make  him  known  to  us  as  his  own  spirit  would.  Nothing 
spiritual,  notliing  Divine,  can  be  done  by  deputy ;  and  the 
prophets  are  no  vicars  of  God,  to  stand  in  His  stead  among 
alien  souls,  and  kindle  in  them  a  flame  unfed  by  the  Light  of 
lights.  And  yet,  so  close  and  deep  is  our  interdependency 
that  their  mediation  is  indispensable.     For 

2.  The  Divine  life  in  our  humanity  exists  in  various  inten- 
sities, and  in  more  or  less  unveiled  form ;  with  some,  never 
passing  beyond  dim  yearnings  and  impersonal  ideal  images 
of  something  right  and  noble  that  draws  them  on ;  with 
others,  clearing  itself  into  the  personal  presence  and  real  com- 
munion of  the  supremely  Holy.  When  a  mind  kindled  with 
this  inspiring  consciousness  comes  into  contact  with  natures 
still  groping  in  the  half-lit  cloud,  and  simply  tells  its  tale, 
nothing  has  so  much  power  to  turn  the  implicit  feeling  and 
suspicion  of  the  Divine  reality  into  explicit  apprehension  of 
it :  the  truth  of  the  mystery  being  struck,  it  becomes  impera- 
tive and  demands  recognition  by  surprise.  In  this  way  there 
is  certainly  a  lateral  transmission  of  faith  from  mind  to 
mind.  But  it  gives  no  new  realit}^ :  it  only  interprets  what 
is  already  there ;  flinging  a  warm  breath  on  the  inward 
oracles  hid  in  invisible  ink,  it  renders  them  articulate  and 
dazzling  as  the  hand-writing  on  the  wall.  There  is  no 
change  in  the  object  within  sight ;  only  the  film  is  wiped 
away  that  concealed  or  confused  what  was  close  at  hand. 
The  divine  Seer  does  not  convey  over  to  you  Ms  revelation, 
but  qualifies  you  to  receive  your  own.  This  mutual  relation 
is  possible  only  through  the  common  presence  of  God  in  the 
conscience  of  mankind :  that  the  sacred  fire  can  pass  from 
soul  to  soul  is  the  continuous  witness  that  He  lives  in  all. 
Were  not  our  humanity  itself  an  Emmanuel,  there  could  be 
no  Christ  to  bear  the  name.  Take  this  Divine  ground  away, 
shut  up  each  individual  mind  under  its  own  non-conducting 
glass,  and  no  inspiration  given  to  one  can  avail  to  animate 
another.  He  may  indeed  tell  others  what  has  been  revealed 
to  him,  and  they  may  take  it  on   his  word,   and  pass  the 


Chap.  II.]    ''NATURAL''  AND  ''REVEALED  RELIGION:'     309 

report  on ;  but  this  is  not  repeating   his   experience :   it   is 
believing  testimony,  not  seeing  God. 

3.  Physical  phenomena,  whether  observed  or  reported, 
cannot  in  any  form  convey  a  revelation.  They  do  not  fuliil 
the  condition  of  direct  contact  between  the  revealer  and  the 
recipient,  but  on  the  contrary  are  interposed  between,  proceed- 
ing as  effects  from  the  one,  and  entering  as  a  spectacle  through 
the  senses  of  the  other.  All  that  they  can  give  is  something 
seen,  something  heard,  something  felt ;  and  whatever  else 
they  bring  to  light  must  be  elicited  and  elaborated  by  thought, 
and  stand  among  the  inferences  of  natural  reason  or  piety. 
This  will  be  readily  admitted  with  regard  to  all  the  familiar 
changes  of  the  world.  Whatever  lineaments  of  disposing 
intellect  we  trace  behind  the  order  of  the  seasons  or  the 
course  of  life  upon  the  globe,  whatever  vestiges  of  Providence 
we  find  in  the  history  and  culture  of  mankind,  are  confessedly 
reached  as  deductions  of  our  own,  with  authority  contingent 
on  their  logical  validity.  But  it  is  supposed  to  be  otherwise, 
if  the  events  should  be  of  that  exceptional  and  irreducible 
kind  which  men  call  miracles.  Yet  they  too,  appearing  in 
the  same  field,  addressing  the  same  senses,  are  at  precisely 
the  same  remove  from  God  on  the  one  hand  and  from  us  on 
the  other ;  so  that  from  them  too,  if  they  are  to  win  any 
higher  significance,  it  remains  that  we  have  to  reason  up  to 
Him.  Do  you  say,  '  But  miracles  are  his  immediate  act  ?  ' 
Be  it  so :  still,  they  are  his  immediate  action  on  tlie  world, 
and  not  on  us ;  or,  if  on  us,  only  on  our  senses  or  our  limbs  : 
while,  as  we  gaze,  our  immediate  knowledge  is  of  them,  and 
not  of  Him.  They  stand,  no  less  than  the  commonest 
events,  between  ourselves  and  Him,  and  leave  us  to  make 
of  them  what  we  can ;  and  as  we  ponder  them,  and  work 
out  their  theory  to  its  result,  we  are  still  upon  the  lines  of 
natural  religion,  only  dealing  with  excei)tional  phenomena, 
Avhose  law  is  as  yet  unknown.  And  how  far  their  teaching  is 
from  any  simple  and  invariable  voice,  into  how  many  diver- 
gent paths  of  inference  it  may  break,  is  attested  by  every  age 
of  belief  and  unbelief.  To  refer  them  to  the  secret  fund  of 
power  in  the  superhuman  world  is  not  to  give  them  a  source 
sacred  and  supreme.     That  invisible  scene  represents  itself  to 


3IO  DIVINE  AUTHORITY.  [Book  III. 

human  thought  by  no  means  as  a  divine  sohtude,  but  as 
teeming,  like  this  earth,  with  beings  of  various  will ;  any  one 
of  whom  may  supply  the  imaginpiion  with  an  adequate 
source  of  each  startling  event ;  and  Beelzebub  and  Mephis- 
topheles,  the  demons  and  the  ghosts,  the  sorcerer's  fiends  and 
the  medium's  prompters,  have  all  in  turn  found  recognition 
as  depositaries  of  supernatural  power  among  men.  Granting 
that  their  claim  must  be  disallowed,  yet,  even  for  this  it 
must  be  heard  and  answered ;  and  so  we  are  unrelieved  from 
our  conditions  of  subsidiary  reasoning  and  mediate  relief, 
and  pass  by  a  circuit  no  shorter  than  before  to  the  assured 
presence  of  the  living  God. 

If  such  phenomena,  instead  of  being  observed,  are  re-ported, 
they  themselves,  with  all  that  they  contain,  are  known  only 
through  an  estimate  of  evidence ;  and  being  reached  by 
more  or  fewer  steps  of  probability,  are  foreign  to  the  category 
of  Eevelation.  Should  they  be  of  the  miraculous  kind,  the 
inferences  from  them  will  even  compare  unfavourably,  in 
respect  of  the  risk  of  error,  with  those  of  the  familiar 
"  Natural  religion ;  "  for  there  the  consecutive  links  are 
supplied  by  considerations  rational  and  moral,  the  con- 
clusion is  congruous  in  character  with  the  premisses,  and 
the  whole  intellectual  structure  is  homogeneous  throughout ; 
whereas,  in  the  supposed  teaching  of  attested  "  signs  and 
wonders  "  no  arch  of  appreciable  relation  spans  the  interval 
between  the  attestation  and  the  thing  attested ;  and  the  be- 
liever has  to  take  at  a  leap  the  chasm  that  separates  them,  in 
blind  trust  that  the  witness  has  power  to  land  him  safe. 
Moreover,  be  the  value  of  such  inference  what  it  may  at  one 
remove  from  the  fountain  head,  its  assurance  suffers  reduction, 
at  every  step  of  transmission,  and  rapidly  passes  into  the  pre- 
cariousness  of  a  tradition.  In  the  case  of  ordinary  history 
there  are  critical  resources  for  minimizing  this  precariousness, 
by  rules  of  analogy  and  measures  of  probability  ;  but  where 
the  facts  attested  lie  out  of  all  analogy,  and  are  amenable  to 
no  standard  of  probability,  where  they  are  unconditionally 
staked  on  an  authority  silent  in  the  sleep  of  ages,  these  safe- 
guards fail  us  :  so  that  the  mere  inheritance  of  a  reported 
revelation,    dealing   with   matters   which   we   cannot   verify, 


Chap.  II.]   ''NATURAL''  AND  "REVEALED  RELIGIONS    311 

would  but  leave  us  with  an  organism  of  natural  religion  of  far 
more  attenuated  strength  than  that  which  usually  goes  by  the 
name.  As  a  logical  problem,  it  will  always  be  more  difficult 
to  establish  the  adequacy  of  a  personal  authority  for  a  religious 
truth,  than  to  establish  the  truth  itself.  And  as  for  the  moral 
problem, — if  you  deny  or  disparage  the  spiritual  apprehensions 
of  humanity,  your  authority  has  nothing  to  speak  to  ;  if  you 
admit  them,  it  ceases  to  be  mere  authority  ;  for  the  revelation 
verifies  and  renews  itself. 

4.  In  virtue  of  its  immediate  or  intuitive  character,  Eevela- 
tion  must  always  open  our  eyes  to  what  really  zs  or  ou[\]it  to  he, 
not  to  what  has  happened,  is  happening,  or  icill  happen.  The 
organs  and  processes  of  Sense  are  our  provisions  for  noting 
phenomena  as  they  pass  ;  the  registers  of  memory  and  com- 
l^utations  of  the  understanding,  for  reading  their  series  back 
into  the  past  and  forward  into  the  future :  to  these  faculties 
it  is, — which  move  by  steps  of  thought, — that  all  the  contents 
of  Time  are  amenable  and  come  up  for  judgment ;  but  the 
Time  itself  in  which  these  contents  are  found  we  bring  with  us 
as  intuitively  given.  In  like  manner,  the  properties  of  all 
figured  spaces  are  determinable  by  deduction  f]-om  their  defi- 
nitions ;  but  not  without  the  Space  itself,  already  known  as  a 
condition  of  them  all.  The  immediate  self- disclosure  of  God 
to  the  human  spirit,  similarly  carries  in  it  the  consciousness 
of  a  present  Infinite  and  Eternal,  behind  and  above  as  well  as 
within  all  the  changes  of  the  finite  world.  It  brings  us  into 
contact  with  a  Will  beyond  the  visible  order  of  the  universe, 
of  a  Law  other  than  the  experienced  consecution  of  phenomena, 
of  a  Spirit  transcending  all  spirits,  3'et  communing  with  them 
in  pleadings  silently  understood.  But  it  recites  no  history ; 
it  utters  no  Sibylline  oracles ;  it  paints  no  ultramundane 
scenes;  it  heralds  neither  woes  nor  triumphs  of  "the  latter 
days."  So  foreign  are  such  apocalyptic  things  from  the 
essence  of  "  revelation,"  that  they  exemplify  the  lowest  aber- 
rations of  "natural  religion."  "Whether  or  not  God  could 
impart  to  us  knowledge  of  this  type  I  will  not  presume  to  sa}^ ; 
but,  certainly,  neither  the  capacities  he  has  given  us  nor  the 
scene  in  which  he  has  placed  us  are  provided  with  the  means  of 
receiving  and  authenticating  such  phenomenal  foreknowledge. 


312  DIVINE  AUTHORITY.  [Book  ill. 

5.  The  analysis  which  has  been  given  requires  us  to  invert 
the  accepted  order  of  dependence  between  natural  and  revealed 
religion.  In  treatises  which  assign  validity  to  both,  the 
former  invariably  occupies  the  prior  place,  and  is  taken  as 
the  necessary  presupposition  of  the  latter ;  on  the  obvious 
ground  that,  till  the  existence  of  a  Eevealer  is  assured,  the 
pretensions  of  a  revelation  cannot  be  tested,  and  its  indis- 
pensable marks  determined.  The  conclusion  therefore  which 
tarminates  the  reasonings  of  natural  religion  must  be  reached 
in  order  to  furnish  the  first  condition  of  revealed  :  and  on  the 
solidity  of  that  borrowed  premiss  all  that  follows  inevitably 
depends.  The  Theism  which  is  thus  the  apyji  of  revealed  re- 
ligion must  therefore,  as  the  te'Aoc  of  natural  religion,  be  won 
by  non-religious  premisses,  such  as  a  mere  logician,  dealing 
only  with  intellectual  concepts,  will  be  competent  to  wield. 
A  theologian  who  follows  this  order  of  procedure,  from  purely 
scientific  data  at  one  end,  to  the  contents  of  the  creeds  at  the 
other,  can  hardly  escape  two  fallacies.  On  passing  to  the 
treatment  of  revealed  religion,  he  pleads  for  its  necessity  on 
the  ground  of  the  inadequacy  and  uncertainty*of  natural  re- 
ligion ;  not  observing  that  the  whole  of  this  weakness  he  him- 
self imports  at  the  outset  into  his  evidence  of  Eevelation,  so 
as  to  double  the  precariousness  from  which  he  proposes  to 
save  his  conclusions.  And  in  the  first  half  of  his  task  he 
deceives  himself  by  secreting  in  his  premisses  more  than  he 
supposes  them  to  contain,  the  additional  element  being  no 
other  than  the  conclusion  itself :  for  whether  he  works  from 
the  principle  of  causality,  or  from  the  signs  of  a  perfection 
higher  than  the  realized  world,  he  hides  within  them  the 
assumption  of  living  Will,  of  supreme  excellence,  of  eternal 
Authority,  which  come  out  at  the  last  in  concentrated  form 
under  the  name  God.  The  implied  datum  on  which  his  mind 
proceeds  in  his  interpretation  of  the  universe  is  the  imperson- 
ation of  causality  and  the  ideal  of  righteous  life :  wdien  it  is 
charged  upon  him  as  a  iictitio  j^rincijni,  he  resents  the  impu- 
tation of  unconscious  blindness :  rather  let  him  own  it  as  a 
Divine  revealing.  It  truly  is  the  ground  intuitively  assumed 
in  all  his  reasonings  on  nature  without  and  life  within  :  they 
lead   to   explicit   Theism,    because  they   start  from   implicit 


Chap.  II.]   ''NATURAL"  AND  ''REVEALED  RELIGION:'     313 

Theism :  which  therefore  stands  as  an  initial  revelation,  out 
of  which  is  evolved  the  whole  organism  of  natural  religion 
needed  for  the  ulterior  proof  of  what,  under  the  name  of  his- 
toric revelation,  is  in  fact,  as  a  reasoned  product,  a  second 
part,  or  supplementary  development,  of  natural  religion. 

Thus  the  intuitive  and  personal  character  of  revealed  re- 
ligion necessarily  places  it  first  in  the  order  of  thought,  and 
hands  it  over  into  the  conditions  and  the  denomination  of 
natural  religion  on  the  delivery  and  subsequent  history  of  its 
influence.  Whatever  records  it  secures,  whatever  usages  it 
creates,  whatever  doctrines  it  brings  into  form,  whatever  types 
of  character  it  moulds,  are  mixed  products  of  the  original 
grace  and  the  recipient  natures,  and  may  develop,  under  right 
direction,  into  higher  truth  and  purer  good :  or  under  wrong 
direction  or  none  at  all,  sink  to  lower  levels  of  abject  super- 
stition and  ignoble  aims.  The  actual  history  of  Christendom 
presents  examples  of  both.  For  how  much  of  what  has  arisen 
in  its  train  the  religion  of  Christ  himself  must  be  deemed 
responsible  can  be  determined  only  by  surveying,  in  their 
chief  groups,  the  concurrent  historical  conditions  which  have 
either  perverted  or  fostered  its  spirit,  as  it  passed  through  the 
ages,  and  then  turning  back,  after  withdrawing  these  foreign 
elements,  to  contemplate,  in  its  rescued  personality,  the 
solitary  form  of  the  Son  of  Man . 


BOOK     IV. 

SEVERANCE  OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS  FROM  CHRISTENDOM. 


CHAPTER  I. 

REVEALED    RELIGION    AND    APOCALYPTIC    RELIGION. 

The  distinction  insisted  on  in  the  foregoing  chapter,  between 
immediate  intuition  as  Divine,  and  reasoned  conviction  as 
human,  has  been  expressed  in  modern  language,  but  is  by 
no  means  an  innovation  of  modern  thought.  In  other  forms 
it  presented  itself  to  both  Greek  and  Jew.  Plato,  indeed,  is 
said  to  have  fallen  short  of  the  conception  of  llevelation, 
because  he  identified  the  knowledge  of  truth  with  the  highest 
Good,  and  this  again  with  the  "  Idea  of  God,"  and  regarded 
that  knowledge  as  accessible  to  human  reason,  and  apparently, 
therefore,  left  nothing  beyond  the  compass  of  the  mind's  own 
faculty.  But  the  inference  vanishes  as  soon  as  we  remember 
that  Plato's  "  idea  of  God"  does  not,  like  ours,  denote  a  mere 
thought  of  the  human  subject,  but  also  the  reality  of  the 
Divine  object,  turning  up  into  intellectual  consciousness ;  and 
this  unification  of  the  infinite  with  the  finite  intelligence, 
giving  the  former  to  apprehension  by  the  latter,  is  the 
Hellenic  equivalent  both  of  intuition  and  of  revelation.  Whether 
we  say  that  the  theory  of  God  in  the  human  mind  is  the  real 
presence  of  Himself,  or  that  he  reveals  Himself  innnediately  to 
man,  we  do  but  record  the  same  spiritual  experience  in  the 
terms  of  somewhat  difierent  schools. 

Place  the  same  experience  at  the  disposal  of  the  Jewish 
Platonist,  Philo,  and  the  expression  of  it  is  modified.  The 
human  mind  is  indeed  cognizant  of  God,  the  primal  reality  ;  not. 


3i6  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

however,  through  the  reach  of  its  own  faculties,  which  are  quite 
transcended  by  the  Divine  essence  ;  but  by  special  revelation, 
which  thus  sets  a  crown  of  preternatural  glory  on  the  head  of 
the  highest  intellect.  This  communicated  idea,  being  super- 
rational,  plants  the  Supreme  Good  beyond  the  range  of  all 
philosophy,  and  reserves  it  to  be  conditional  on  inspiration. 
In  this  feature  of  Philo's  theory,  Harnack*  finds  the  Greek 
principle  of  the  supremacy  of  knowledge  to  be  not  so  much 
rejected,  as  outbid  ;  and  room  henceforth  provided  for  an  over- 
toj^ping  heaven  of  revelation,  to  which  no  wing  of  thought 
can  lift  the  Eeason.  And  when  we  observe,  that  for  the 
dialectic  on  which  Plato  relies  for  ascending  to  the  Idea  of 
God,  Philo  substitutes  the  prophet's  ecstasy,  the  interpretation 
seems  accordant  with  the  colouring  of  the  text.  But  the 
contrast  drawn  is  illusory,  Plato  does  not  deny  that  the 
enlightening  power  is  divine  :  Philo  does  not  deny  that  the 
illuminated  field  is  the  seer's  intellect.  The  ecstasy  of  the 
latter,  as  a  Divine  act  attended  by  a  flash  of  human  insight, 
i.e.,  as  a  revealing  moment,  is  simply  intuition,  as  immediate 
consciousness  of  God ;  and  that  this  consciousness  means,  for 
the  Platonist,  the  co-presence  of  the  Objest  with  the  Subject  is 
no  new  thing,  but  is  already  involved,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the 
twofold  aspect  of  his  "  Idea  of  God."  All  else  that  the  word 
ecstasy  suggests,  beyond  its  cognitive  significance,  the  absorb- 
ing emotion,  the  transcended  self-consciousness,  the  prophetic 
fervour, — is  foreign  to  its  comparison  with  other  theories  of 
knowledge,  and  forms  the  corona  of  atmospheric  flames  in- 
vesting the  central  substance  of  spiritually  apprehended  fact. 
I  cannot  perceive,  therefore,  the  alleged  fundamental  and 
structural  difference  between  the  two  philosophies  of  religious 
knowledge ;  or  anything  more  than  is  due  to  the  intenser 
affection  and  deeper  enthusiasm  inseparable  from  the  strong 
hold  of  the  personality  of  God  upon  the  Jewish  mind. 

At  all  events,  in  order  to  effect  this  supposed  advance  upon 
Plato,  Philo  had  but  to  fall  back  upon  the  history  of  his  own 
nation,  and  listen  to  the  voices  of  its  ancient  seers,  especially 
in  the  utterances  wrung  from  them  in  times  of  trouble,  which 
sifted  the  true  men  from  the  false.  Every  reader  of  the 
*  Lehrbucli  der  Dogmengeschichte,  Band  I.  S.  96-98  (2*^  Auflage). 


Chap.  I.]    REVEALED   AND  APOCALYPTIC  RELIC lOX.     317 

Hebrew  Scriptures  must  have  noticed,  not  without  questionings 
of  wonder,  the  frequent  contrast  of  two  competing  classes  of 
prophets,  false  and  true,  and  the  rules  provided  for  distinguish- 
ing them  from  each  other.  For  the  prophet's  hearers,  no 
other  test  is  available  than  the  experience  whether  his  words 
come  true.  But  the  prophet  himself  intuitively  knows  the 
touch  of  God  by  the  authoritative  consciousness  of  his 
immediate  communion,  which  never  really  attends  the 
subjective  phantasmagoria  of  his  own  imagination.  "Witli 
what  precision,  and  what  di'amatic  irony,  does  Jeremiah  thus 
distinguish  between  what  is  given  to  the  human  mind,  and 
what  is  elaborated  by  it,  when  he  introduces  God  himself  as 
speaking  thus :  "I  have  heard  what  the  prophets  said,  that 
prophesy  lies  in  my  name,  saying,  '  I  have  dreamed,  I  have 
dreamed.'  The  prophet  that  hath  a  dream,  let  him  tell  a 
dream ;  and  he  that  hath  m}^  word,  let  him  speak  my  word 
faithfully.  "What  is  the  chaff  to  the  wheat?  saith  the 
Lord."* 

As  "  the  chaff  to  the  wheat,"  it  seems,  so  is  the  prophet's 
"  dream "  to  the  real  "  word  of  the  Lord,"  Such  is  the 
relative  value  of  "  apocalyptic  "  as  compared  with  "  revealed  " 
religion, — of  the  special  pictures  and  visual  representations 
of  divine  things  in  a  single  mind,  as  against  that  universal 
appeal  of  God  to  our  humanity  which  the  prophet's  voice  first 
makes  articulate.  If  he  comes  to  me,  saying,  "  I  have 
dreamed,  I  have  dreamed,"  and  tells  me  of  seas  of  glass  and 
cities  of  jasper,  and  fills  me  with  a  drama  of  trumpets  and 
vials,  and  armies  of  angels,  and  a  dragon  eneluiined,  how  am 
I  to  know  whether  it  is  indeed  his  dream,  or  whether  he 
"  prophesies  lies  "  ?  None  but  God  can  tell.  And  who  shall 
say,  be  it  ever  so  veraciously  told,  wlience  it  comes,  and 
what  it  is  worth '?  or  shall  pretend  to  learn  anything  from  it 
of  the  constitution  or  course  of  this  universe '?  There  can 
be  no  more  hopeless  task  than  to  verify  another  man's  visions 
of  scenes  beyond  our  reach  ;  and  to  seek  nourislunent  for  the 
soul  from  such  things  is,  indeed,  to  feed  on  "  chaff."  But  if 
the  prophet  comes  to  me  with  "  the  word  of  the  Lord,"  with 
the  inspiration  of  a  higher  insight,   and  the  authority  of  a 

*  Jeremiah  xxiii.  25.  28. 


31 8  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

purer  will ;  if  he  tears  away  the  veil  of  my  inward  dreams, 
instead  of  spreading  the  images  of  his  own,  and  reveals  me  to 
myself  as  I  am  and  as  I  ought  to  be ;  if  he  wakes  me  from 
my  bed  of  selfish  ease,  and  sends  me  out  on  thorny  ways  to 
do  the  tasks  and  bear  the  sorrows  of  compassion  ;  if  he  shames 
me  out  of  the  doubts  which  hang  around  the  lower  mind  by 
lifting  me  into  the  light  of  a  more  trustful  love ;  I  am  sure,  of 
myself,  that  he  has  spoken  to  me  a  Divine  word  ;  that  I  live 
in  a  light  I  never  had  before ;  that  whether  I  know  or  not 
who  he  is,  and  whence  he  cometh,  this  one  thing  I  know,  that 
"whereas  I  was  blind,  now  I  see. 

As  even  prophets  may  be  self-deceivers,  perhaps  this  dis- 
tinction between  the  vision  which  cannot  be  verified  and  the 
spiritual  truth  which  verifies  itself, — let  us  say  between  apoca- 
lypse and  revelation, — may  not  always,  in  the  first  instance, 
exist  for  the  prophet  himself,  and  may  not  be  fully  realized, 
till  he  tries  to  carry  his  "  burthen  "  into  other  minds.  So 
long  as  he  is  alone  with  God,  all  that  surrounds  an  immediate 
action  of  the  Divine  Spirit  upon  his  own  may  indiscriminately 
affect  him  as  a  revelation,  the  light  from  some  flash  of  moral 
conviction,  spreading  itself  over  the  scenic  images  of  invisible 
things  already  painted  on  the  corridors  of  thought.  The 
universal  truth  that  enters  from  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
his  personality,  while  clearing  away  an  illusion  here,  and 
imparting  a  fresh  faith  there,  may  meet,  in  the  special  con- 
tents of  his  nature,  much  that  is  neutral ,-  that  may  thus,  by 
its  tacit  presence,  get  mistakenly  covered  by  the  new  reverence. 
But  let  him  quit  his  solitude,  and  try  his  message  on  the 
hearts  of  men,  and  the  two  elements  will  instantl}''  fall  asunder  ; 
the  personal  vision,  the  creation  of  fancy,  will  be  believed,  if 
at  all,  on  his  word ;  the  Spiritual  truth,  on  God's ;  the  one 
loses  its  revealed  character  at  the  first  step  ;  the  other  doubles 
it :  the  one  sinks  into  a  marvel  of  individual  biography ;  the 
other  rises  into  a  new  human  consciousness  of  relation  to  God. 
The  reason  is  obvious.  The  prophet's  apocalypse  is  a  speci- 
alty which  lies  outside  the  apprehensions  and  sympathies  of 
others  ;  while  his  revelation  is  flung  into  recesses  of  their 
nature  which  peal  Avith  multiplying  echoes,  and  speaks  what, 
yet  unspoken,  was  already  there.     So  far  only  as  his  inspira- 


Chap.  I.]    REVEALED  AND  APOCALYPTIC  RELIGION.     319 

tion  touches  the  chord  of  a  universal  inspiration,  and  repeats 
in  others  his  own  immediate  divine  knowledge,  does  he  do  the 
work   of  heaven   upon  earth,  and  wield  any  blessed  power 


among  men. 


It  is  objected,  however,  that,  if  the  range  of  revealed  religion 
is  simply  co-extensive  with  that  of  human  intuition,  it  is 
superfluous  :  for,  if  God  himself  brings  his  living  Spirit  to 
every  soul,  there  can  hardly  be  room  for  the  mediation  of 
prophets  to  plead  in  his  stead.  If  a  private  revelation  be 
ffiven  to  each  of  us  what  occasion  is  left  for  any  historical 
revelation  to  all '?  Is  not  the  whole  function  of  the  inspired 
messenger  to  give  us,  what  else  we  could  not  find  ?  If  he 
never  ascends  beyond  the  resources  given  to  our  humanity  at 
large,  and  can  never  authenticate  for  us  any  tidings  from  the 
further  darkness,  is  not  his  occupation  gone  ?   . 

Not  so,  if  we  only  consider  how  all  human  culture,  spiritual 
as  w'ell  as  natural,  hangs  upon  the  inequality  of  souls  ;  and  as 
the  child  depends  upon  the  parent,  and  the  sick  lean  upon  the 
healthy,  so  too  the  weak  conscience  is  lifted  by  the  strong, 
and  the  dim- sighted  grow  towards  the  sphere  of  more  luminous 
natures,  and  the  faint  whisper  of  a  pure  inspiration  in  the 
inmost  vault  of  the  soul  wakes  up  with  answering  resonance, 
and  swells  and  comes  out  into  the  air  in  presence  of  a  fuller 
tone.     The  grace  of  spiritual  insight,  though  never  withheld 
from  any  responsible  being,  exists  in  every  variety  of  clear- 
ness and  intensity  ;  remaining,  at  one  extreme,  a  bare  possi- 
bility not   yet  brought  to  the  birth  ;    and  reaching,   at  the 
other,  the  realized  maturity  of  the  large  and  saintly  mind. 
In  matters  of  the  inward  life,  among  the  deep  springs  of  good- 
ness, beauty,  and  faith,  a  thousand  things  which  it  is  given 
us  to  know  may  lie  unsuspected  in  the  dark  :  a  whole  world 
of  truth  is  there,  but,  for  want  of  light,  not  a  flower,  perhaps, 
has  ever  opened  on  its  Elysian  field,  and,  for  want  of  warmth, 
not  a  stream  has  ever  flowed.     It  is  the  realm  of  implicit 
knowledge,   knowledge   still   shut  up  and  fast   asleep,    with 
blossom  waiting  to  be  born,  l)ut  meanwhile   shajDeless  and 
tintless  in  its  prison.     Tlie  prophet,   like  the  poet,  is  he  for 
•whom  the  creative  hour  has  come  upon  this  inner  world,  and 
the  word  been  passed,  "  Let  there  bo  Light !  "   and  beneath 


320  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

the  vernal  sky  and  the  soft  breath  of  a  season  of  the  soul  that 
never  wanes,  every  possibility  of  beauty  is  nourished  at  the 
root,  and  the  divinest  secrets  burst  into  bloom.  The  very 
same  field  has  here  become  a  realm  of  exjdicit  knowledge ; 
what  is  unconscious  and  latent  in  the  one  case  having,  in  the 
other,  passed  into  the  daylight  of  clear  apprehension.  To 
carry  the  minds  of  men  from  the  earlier  to  the  maturer  stage, 
nothing  is  so  effectual  as  contact  with  one  by  whom  the 
transition  has  been  made,  and  who  can  tell  the  story  of  the 
way.  He  remembers  the  darkness  while  he  feels  the  dawn ; 
he  pities  the  blind  as  they  grope  along  the  wall,  while  he 
freely  moves  upon  the  open  grass,  and  directs  his  course  by 
the  everlasting  hills  :  and  as  he  describes  what  he  sees,  his 
breath  falls  upon  an  invisible  picture  in  the  listeners'  souls, 
and  brings  out  its  lineaments  to  verify  his  word.  Being 
simply  in  advance  of  their  moral  intuition,  he  does  but  break 
the  seals  of  an  oracle  which  they  have  kept  and  never  read. 
He  articulately  speaks  the  silent  inscriptions,  on  which  they 
had  never  turned  their  eye,  on  the  inner  chamber  of  their 
nature.  And  as  thus  they  know  it  to  be  true,  the  moment  it 
is  uttered,  it  draws  towards  him  a  reverence,  and  invests  him 
with  an  authority,  due  only  to  one  who  can  interpret  the  God 
within  us  all.  The  ])rophet  then  still  has  his  specialty  ;  con- 
sisting, however,  simply  in  the  higher  intensity  of  a  grace 
common  to  our  humanity.  He  is  himself  the  subject  of  a 
real  revelation,  i.e.,  of  an  immediate  action  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  upon  his  own.  And  he  is  the  occasion  of  a  real  revela- 
tion to  others,  by  putting  them  into  susceptibility  for  like 
immediate  unveiling  of  God. 

When  we  thus  limit  revelation  to  the  sphere  of  intuitive 
apprehension,  i.e.,  of  moral  and  spiritual  truth,  the  question 
will  perhaps  be  asked,  whether  then  we  are  to  pronounce  it 
impossible  for  God  to  give  us  a  proper  apocalypse,- — i.e.,  an 
immediate  disclosure  of  eternal  facts  and  realities,  which  lie 
beyond  the  compass  of  our  faculties  or  our  opportunities,  such 
as  the  existence  of  living  beings  on  other  worlds,  or  the  jDro- 
vision  of  successive  lives  for  man,  or  a  x)lurality  of  personal 
natures  within  His  own  unity.  Two  brief  remarks  suffice  for 
a  reply. 


Chap.  I.]    REVEALED  AND  APOCALYPTIC  RELIGION.     321 

1.  It  is  not  a  question  of  what  it  is  possible  for  God  to  give, 
but  of  what  it  is  possible  for  us  to  receive  :  and  it  is  no  limi- 
tation of  His  power  to  say,  that  into  capacity  such  as  ours, 
and  through  media  such  as  our  dwelling-place  affords,  the 
ultra-mundane  knowledge  supposed  could  not  pass  and  be 
authenticated.  We  are  not  made  for  its  reception ;  and  the 
earth  is  not  made  for  its  display. 

2.  Whether  or  not  means  might  be  found  for  revealing 
other  than  moral  and  spiritual  truth,  the  media  actually 
present  are  available  simply  for  this  end.  They  all  resolve 
themselves  into  testimony  ;  and  who  can  attest  such  facts  of 
ultimate  being  as  the  constitution  of  the  Godhead,  or  the 
eternal  life  of  the  Son  of  God  ?  or  such  invisible  scenes  as  the 
superhuman  abodes  of  the  spirits  bad  and  good  ?  or  the  mys- 
terious drama  of  the  future  which  lies  beyond  the  realm  cif 
death  ?  In  order  to  bring  upon  the  earth  an  adequate  witness 
of  such  things,  the  incarnation  of  a  Divine  person  has  to  be 
presumed ;  and  that  in  its  turn  is  a  kind  of  fact  which  tran- 
scends all  evidence,  and  which  human  testimony  never  can 
approach.  An  apocalypse  of  such  things  is  incommunicable 
by  veracity  ever  so  faithful :  to  me  who  onl}^  hear  it,  it  is 
simply  a  reiMrted  vision,  not  a  discovery  of  icJiat  is:  it  takes 
me  into  the  mind  that  has  seen  it,  but  it  takes  me  not  beyond. 
And  even  this  it  does,  only  by  a  vote  of  confidence  in  the  seer, 
which  rests  on  other  grounds,  and  is  resolvable  at  last  into 
the  authority  of  his  moral  and  spiritual  insight.  It  is  on  the 
faith,  or  ratlier  the  experience,  of  his  true  account  of  the 
divine  facts  within,  that  he  is  accepted  as  interpreter  also  of 
the  divine  facts  in  the  infinitude  without. 

In  this  distinction  between  apocalyptic  and  revealed  religion 
we  have,  I  believe,  a  mark  by  which  the  truest  prophets  may 
be  discerned.  Pretenders  and  self-deceivers  are  fond  of  know- 
ing what  no  one  else  can  know  ;  they  have  been  let  into  some 
special  turn  of  the  heavenly  economy  which  shall  startle  the 
wonder  of  mankind.  They  have  always  their  apocalypse, 
which  amends  the  program  of  the  scenes  beyond  the  world. 
They  think  it  nothing  great  and  solemn  to  frequent  the  shrine 
withhi,  and  connuunc  with  Ilim  that  sectli  in  secret :  but  the 
darker  they  are  on  that  side,  the  more  do  they  strain  on  the 

Y 


322  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

other  for  light  thej^  can  never  find ;  and  the  more  dim-eyed 
they  are,  the  further  do  they  take  their  look.  The  Mormon 
prophet,  who  cannot  tell  God  from  devil  close  at  hand,  is  well 
up  with  the  history  of  both  worlds,  and  commissioned  to  get 
ready  the  second  promised  land.  The  Anabaptist  of  West- 
phalia, after  flinging  all  the  sanctities  away  in  the  name  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  announces  a  kingdom  of  the  saints,  that  is 
to  hold  the  earth  for  ever  as  its  own.  To  trumpet  forth,  like 
such  noisy  interpreters,  the  external  scheme  of  God,  is  a  missive 
of  empty  breath,  which  almost  any  storm-wind  of  human 
fancy  may  send  forth.  From  the  very  echo  in  his  thought  of 
such  audacious  gospel  the  true  prophet  shrinks.  He  will 
neither  strive  or  cry  ;  nor  is  it  thus  that  his  voice  is  heard  in 
the  street.  He  is  not  at  home  in  the  politics  and  revolutions 
of  the  universe, — has  not  seen  the  measures  in  reserve, — 
cannot  discuss  the  questions  of  the  spiritual  clubs  ;  he  knows 
not  the  day  nor  the  hour.  But  he  is  at  one  with  the  Spirit 
that  governs  all ;  and  keeping  close  to  the  centre,  cares  not  to 
lay  down  the  map  of  the  circumference.  He  loves  the  com- 
mon elements  of  human  religion,  in  which  he  mingles  with 
the  affections  of  his  kind,  yet  feels  the  consecrating  presence 
of  his  God  ;  the  susceptibilities  and  simple  trusts  which  may 
be  less  fresh  in  the  priest  than  in  the  child,  nay,  in  the 
decorous  than  in  the  outcast,  which  the  cares  of  the  world  so 
often  wither,  and  intellect  alone  will  not  avail  to  keep.  From 
these  it  is,  and  not  from  his  own  "  dream,"  from  what  is 
exceptionally  his,  that  he  speaks  ;  and  to  these  he  carries  his 
appeal ;  sure  that  he  does  but  anticipate  what  others  can 
verify,  and  make  them  partners  of  an  inspiration  meant  for 
all.  This  holds  pre-eminently  of  Jesus ;  who  again  and  again 
thrust  aside  apocalyptic  questions,  or  gave  them  an  ideal 
turn,  and  floated  them  away  on  the  current  of  spiritual 
religion.  The  sublimest  things  which  he  told  the  people  he 
assumed  that  they  in  their  secret  hearts  must  know  ;  he  gave 
them  a  higher  truth  than  they  would  hear  from  the  scribes  in 
Moses'  seat ;  but  nothing  that  they  might  not  realize  in  their 
closet,  when  alone  with  the  heart- Searcher.  In  this  feature, 
I  believe,  was  the  root  and  essence  of  his  power.  Thus  it  was 
that  he  established  a  link  of  communion  between  the  human 


Chap.  I.]    REVEALED  AND  APOCALYPTIC  RELIGION.     323 

soul  and  God  ;  who  never  l)efore  had  the  same  confidences 
together,  as  m  the  highest  religious  life  of  Christendom. 

In  the  first  effect  of  such  pure  power  there  is  something 
singularly  deep  and  winning  ;  and  it  is  easy  to  believe  tliat 
among  the  waiting  and  aspiring  minds  that  he  had  lifted  out 
of  their  shadows  into  the  light  of  God,  his  image,  especially 
when  touched  with  the  infinite  pathos  of  the  Cross,  would  be 
enshrined  in  an  unspeakable  reverence.  The  change  which 
he  had  wrought  in  them,  the  transition  from  implicit  to 
explicit  consciousness  of  divine  things,  is  unique  and  en- 
trancing ; — a  waking-up  to  find  that  the  dull  weight  and  the 
troubled  dream  of  sleepy  habit  were  illusions  of  the  night,  and 
that  the  real  world  i^  sweet  and  fair  with  the  touch  of  morning. 
The  first  deep  contrition  for  sin,  the  first  real  daily  walk  or 
midnight  watch  with  the  living  God,  the  first  opening  per- 
spective of  a  life  in  death, — these  things  are  to  many  like  the 
emergence  from  a  dark  chill  cave  to  the  flood  of  warm  and 
beautifying  light ;  and  the  hour  that  brings  them  is  full  of  an 
excitement  that  is  long  ere  it  subsides.  But  every  burst  of 
dawn  must  settle  into  daylight ;  and  every  opening  of  revealed 
religion  must  become  habitual,  and  leave  behind  its  first 
surprise.  The  truth  which  it  has  given  takes  its  quiet  place 
within,  fuses  itself  into  the  very  texture  of  our  thought,  and 
becomes  an  integral  part  of  us,  and  no  longer  carries  on  it  the 
mark  of  its  nativity.  The  level  of  life  is  permanently  raised, 
but  over  an  area  so  large  that,  looking  quite  natural  all  round, 
it  suggests  nothing  of  the  fact  or  the  source  of  its  elevation  ; 
and  it  seems  to  us  as  if  it  could  never  have  been  otherwise. 
The  more  the  insight  given  is  complete  and  has  passed  into 
self-evidence,  the  less  are  we  able  to  wonder  at  the  gift ;  and 
the  fervid  veneration  of  the  first  conversion  declines  into  a 
cold  historic  recognition,  or  dies  away  into  absolute  forgetful- 
ness.  The  influence  of  countless  forgotten  benefactors,  organs 
in  their  day  of  God's  spirit,  and  centres  of  a  healing  love  and 
trust,  mingles  insensibly  with  our  present  life,  and  makes  it, 
unawares,  from  first  to  last,  an  All- Saints'  Day  ;  and  often, 
perhaps,  we  celebrate  them  better  when  we  know  tlicm  not, 
and  merely  think  the  truth  and  love  the  good  and  feel  the 
beauty  which  they  dissolved  into  the  air  we  breathe,   than 

Y  2 


J24  SEVERANCE    OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

when  we  count  out  the  conscious  reasons  for  our  reverence, 
and  crystallize  them  into  forms  of  commemoration.  For, 
somehow,  with  every  secret  inspiration,  as  it  passes  outward 
to  be  looked  at,  a  certain  falsehood  and  artifice  of  thought 
is  sure  to  mingle,  and  it  takes  quite  another  shape  and 
colour  beneath  the  eyes  of  men,  and  more  and  more  hides 
what  it  really  is  under  the  growth  of  what  it  is  to  seem  ;  and 
so  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  falsest  reasons  are  given  for  the 
truest  things. 

Christendom,  from  end  to  end,  is  one  gigantic  example  of 

this.     It  was  impossible  that  such  a  trustful  affection  as  its 

author  had  drawn  upon  him  should  die  away  into  an  invisible 

trace  upon  the  life  of  men  ;  yet  equally  impossible  that  the 

simplicity  and  depth  of  its  real  power  should  be  consciously 

apprehended   as    well   as   inwardly   felt   by    the    generation 

nearest  to  him.     And  had  its  ground  been  truly  stated  a  little 

after,  when  the  new  colours  he  had  shed  on  life  had  grown 

familiar  and  undistinguishable  from  the  common  light  of  day, 

it  would  have  seemed  to  give  too  poor  an  account  of  so  divine 

an  agency  ;  and  the  vulgar  pomp  of  theological  imagination 

(which   appears   unsusceptible   of  the   baptism  of  humility) 

would  have  cried  again,  '  Can  any  good  come  out  of  Nazareth?' 

Scarcely   was   he   gone,    therefore,    when   his   disciples,   not 

excepting  those  who  had  been  nearest  to  himself,  began  to 

quit  the  pure  ground  of  trust  to  which  his  presence  held  or 

recalled   them,    and   to   work  out  reasons  of  their  own  for 

clinging  to  him  and  proclaiming  him  as  the  organ  of  a  new 

divine  life  for  the  world.     They  must  have  a  theory  of  his 

person  and  his  work,   and  be  able,   when  asked,  to  tell  all 

about  him,— whence  he  came,  and  where  he  is,  and  what  he 

will  be  ;  thus  turning  their  attention  and  that  of  othars  from 

the  interior  of  his  life  to  its  surrounding  and  invisible  relations. 

Schemes  of  thought  rapidly  consolidated   themselves   about 

what   he   was   and  what  he  meant  to  do  and  what  he  left 

behind  that  was  unique  and  superhuman,  and  set  him  at  a 

height  unapproachable  by  men.     And  so  it  came  tc  pass  that 

his   own  revealed  religion  retired   from  the  front  and  took 

shelter  within  ;  and  in  its  place  there  advanced  an  apocalypse 

respecting  him.     But  where,  in  such  a  life,  could  invention 


Chap,  r.l    REVEALED   AND   APOCALYPTIC   RELIGION.      325 

find  its  point  of  departure  ?     What  excuse  could  it  extort, 
from   a   story   of   such  meek  service  and  teachings  of  such 
spiritual  tone,   for  constructing  an  elaborate  i)ile  of  creeds 
about  him,  and  inscribing  it  all  over  \Yith  the  titles  of  his 
grandeur  '?     Alas  !  they  found  perhaps  in  what  fell  from  him 
when  hard  pressed  with  the  questions  of  his  time,^ — a  few 
dropped  words  to  which  others  gave  a  personal  meaning  thej 
had  not  from  him, — rudiments  to  start  from  in  the  building- 
up  of  such  a  scheme.     He  too  was  human  ;  he  too  stood  in 
an  historic  place,  and  was  woven  in  with  the  living  texture 
that  twines  before  and  after  into  one,   and  renders  mental 
isolation   impossible ;  and  with  the  divine  intuitions  of  his 
mind   were   inevitably   mingled   undivine   traditions    of    his 
country  and  his  time.     On  these,  little  congenial  as  they  were, 
silence  could  not  be  maintained.     And  on  his  share  of  these, 
though  they  were  not  his  specialty,  but  his  inheritance,  his 
disciples  seized,  and  laid  them  as  the  corner-stone  on  which  to 
raise  the  ecclesiastic  pile  of  Christendom.     Of  the  outv.ard 
and   inward,    of   the    earthly   and  the  heavenly  part  of  his 
thought  and  teaching,  the  one  has  been  taken  and  the  other 
left.     On  this  small  and  mistaken  base  there  has  been  heaped 
up  an  immense  and  widening  mass  of  Christian  mythology, 
from  the  first  unstable,  and  now  at  last  apparently  swerving 
to  its  fall.     And  let  it  fall :  for  it  has  corrupted  the  religion  of 
Christ  into  an  apocalyptic  fiction  ;  and  that,  so  monstrous  in 
its  account  of  man,  in  its  theory  of  God,  in  its   picture  of  the 
universe,  in  its  distorted  reflections  of  life  and  death,  that  if 
the  belief  in  it  were  as  real  as  the  profession  of  it  is  loud, 
society  would  relapse  into  a  moral  and  intellectual  darkness 
it  has  long  left,  and  the  lowest  element  of  modern  civilization 
would  be  its  faitli.     The  chief  earlier  stages  of  this  mythologic 
growth,  already  clearly  marked  within  the  Christian  Scriptures 
themselves,  must  next  be  passed  under  review. 


326 


CHAPTER  II. 

•ZIIEOPJES    OF    THE    PERSON    OF    JESUS. 

§  1.  As  Messiah. 

The  "  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,"  revealed  to  him  and  consti- 
tuting his  personal  religion,  was  delivered  to  a  very  various 
world,  over  which  its  message  spread  in  successive  stages, 
through  families  of  men  preoccupied  with  modes  of  thought 
dissimilar  to  it  and  to  each  other.  Taken  up  by  these,  and 
mingling  with  their  speech,  its  voice  was  inevitably  changed, 
and,  like  a  border  dialect,  passed  into  a  patois  pure  to  neither 
heaven  nor  earth.  Three,  at  least,  of  such  modifying  media 
it  had  been  called  to  traverse  before  our  New  Testament 
writings  were  complete  :  viz.,  the  popular  Judaism  of  Israel 
at  home ;  the  Hellenistic  theology  of  mixed  Israelites  and 
proselytes  abroad ;  and  the  Gentile  sects  of  gnostic  specula- 
tion ;  influences  of  which  the  Temple,  the  Synagogue,  and 
the  School  may  be  regarded  as  respective  symbols.  Each  of 
these  in  turn  presented  the  field  on  which  the  new  divine  light, 
and  the  personality  possessed  by  it-  had  to  work  ;  and  only  by 
adjusting  relations  with  what  was  already  there,  and  therefore 
binding  up  together  much  that  was  perishable  with  the  trea- 
sure that  was  eternal, — leaving  the  pearl  within  its  shell, — 
was  it  possible  to  provide  a  vehicle  for  the  gift,  and  prevent 
its  being  lost  as  soon  as  found.  So  long  as  the  scene  was  laid 
in  Palestine,  and  the  action  was  conducted  in  the  language, 
and  appealed  to  the  preconceptions  prevailing  there,  it  wac 
limited  by  impassable  assumptions,  of  the  perpetuity  of  *'  the 
Law,"  the  exclusive  prerogative  of  Israel,  and  the  validity  of 
the  predicted  Messianic  theocracy.  These  ideas  were  crystal- 
lized into  the  very  substance  of  the  religion  of  the  land  ;  and 
whatever  rays  of  fresh  light  might  come  from  heaven  must 
pass  through  their  seat  and  report  their  colours.     How  per- 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        327 

vading  is  their  presence  throughout  the  evangehc  narrative, 
from  the  Star  in  the  East  to  the  Apostles'  parting  question, 
"  Lord,  dost  thou  at  this  time  restore  the  Kingdom  to  Israel?" 
how  they  seem  to  form  a  common  ground  of  reasoning  and 
ultimate  appeal  in  ever}^  difference  between  Jesus  and  his 
opponents,  so  that  he  tests  them  Ijy  their  own  standards,  and 
declares  that  "  not  one  jot  or  tittle  of  the  law  shall  fail :" 
how  it  is  said  that  he  too  expects,  on  his  speedy  return,  to 
reign  over  an  elect  people  and  a  subject  world,  and  promises 
to  place  his  apostles  on  "  twelve  thrones  to  judge  the  twelve 
tribes  of  Israel ;"  is  well  known,  not  perhaps  without  sorrowful 
regrets,  by  every  reader  of  the  synoptic  gospels. 

Not  that  any  one  can  now-a-days  suppose  these  things  to 
form  any  part  of  the  Divine  message  of  Jesus  to  the  world ; 
for  with  him,  at  all  events,  they  are  not  original :  if  he  is 
responsible  with  regard  to  them  at  all,  it  is  onl}'  for  letting 
them  alone.  The  whole  mind  of  the  Palestinian  Jews  had 
become  saturated  with  the  high  colouring  of  a  rude  apocalyptic 
literature  which,  in  imitating  the  Book  of  Daniel  (b.c.  167-164), 
had  put  new  meanings  into  its  symbols,  widened  the  horizon 
of  its  historic  survey,  filled  in  its  Ijlank  futurities  with  fresh 
visions,  and  found  scenery  and  incident  for  the  whole  sacred 
drama  to  its  consummation.  In  the  Jewish  production  which 
forms  the  fundamental  text  of  the  Book  of  Revelation"^  we  see 
how  definite  had  become  the  stages  in  the  mythologj',  the 
actors  of  its  parts,  even  the  date  of  its  catastrophe,  and  the 
splendour  of  its  issue.  Of  that  writing  we  cannot  positively 
say  that  it  was  prior  to  our  era.  But  it  can  no  longer  be 
reasonably  doubted  that  the  nucleus  of  the  Sibylline  oraclest 
and  the  main  part  of  the  Book  of  Enochs  are  productions  from 
the  second  half  of  the  second  century  b.c,  and  faithfully  reflect 

*  See  above,  pp.  225-227. 

t  For  an  account  of  this  production,  see  a  paper  in  the  National  Review, 
No.  XXXII.,  for  April,  18G3,  p.  4GG,  on  "  The  Early  History  of  :Mcssianic 
Ideas." 

+  Of  this  book  an  account  is  given  in  a  second  paper  under  the  same  title. 
National  Review,  No.  XXXVI.,  April,  18G4,  p.  55i.  For  a  thorough  and 
masterly  treatment  of  the  whole  literature  bearing  on  this  subject,  see 
The  Jewish  Messiah:  a  critical  history  of  the  Messianic  idea  among  the 
Jews,  from  the  rise  of  the  IMaccabecs  to  the  closing  of  the  Takaud,  by  Rev. 
James  Drummoud,  LL.D.,  1877. 


328  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  I  v. 

the  pictures  acceptable  to  the  prophetic  imagination  of  the 
people  who  heard  the  word  of  Jesus  and  wondered  who  he 
was.  From  these  sources  we  know  for  certain  that  it  was  not 
/?e  who  filled  with  its  meaning  their  question,  "Art  thou  he 
that  should  come,  or  look  we  for  another?" — who  drew  in 
their  fancy  their  picture  of  the  "  Son  of  David  "  :  who  intro- 
duced them  to  the  expectation  of  his  Advent  with  an  angelic 
host,  to  make  an  end  of  all  that  opposes,  to  open  the  last 
assize,  and  reign  for  centuries  in  the  new  Jerusalem  ;  and 
who  named  for  them  the  harbingers  of  these  last  things,  the 
wars  and  rumours  of  wars,  the  convulsions  of  nature  and 
distress  of  nations,  and  mustering  of  Gentile  armies  against 
the  elect.  The  whole  drama  had  already  been  written,  and 
photographed  in  thought,  and  might  haunt  the  believer's 
conscience  by  day,  and  startle  him  in  dreams  and  visions  of 
the  night.  And  if  Jesus  spake  of  it,  it  was  as  of  something 
given,  and  not  of  what  he  brought. 

But  though  the  pre-existence  of  the  Messianic  idea  relieves 
Jesus  of  responsibility  for  its  contents,  it  leaves  the  question 
open  how  far  he  shared  it  with  his  contemporaries,  and  carried 
its  influence  into  his  ministry.  At  a  tmie  when  all  the  "just 
and  devout  "  in  the  land  were,  like  Simeon,  "  waiting  for  the 
consolation  of  Israel,"  the  home  at  Nazareth  could  not  fail  to 
be  imbued  with  the  common  hope,  to  read  it  into  the  prophets, 
to  hear  of  it  in  the  synagogue,  to  breathe  it  into  many  a 
prayer,  and  throw  its  prospective  look  into  the  wdiole  attitude 
of  life.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  put  any  other  interpretation 
upon  the  self-dedication  of  Jesus  to  his  missionary  labours 
than  that  he  had  a  message  to  deliver,  "  The  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  is  at  hand."  This  sense  of  a  divine  crisis  and  new 
spiritual  birth  is  more  than  the  subject  of  a  parable  here,  and 
a  denunciation  or  a  blessing  there;  it  is,  throughout,  the 
very  spring  of  conviction  that  disposes  of  his  will,  and  shines 
through  all  his  public  compassions  and  lonely  devotions. 

It  is  one  thing,  however,  to  admit  his  belief  in  a  reign  of 
truth  and  righteousness  as  a  promise  made  "  to  the  Fathers," 
and  now  approaching  its  fulfilment;  it  is  quite  another  to 
affirm  that  in  his  own  person  he  claimed  to  realize  it  as  its 
Prince  and  Head.     That  this  also  is  universally  assumed  is 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF    THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.        329 

not  surprising,  seeing  that  the  synoptists  assure  us  that  it 
was  so,  and  tell  it  as  if  it  were  an  attested  fact  and  not  a 
later  inference.  Yet  they  add  (what  surel}'  is  not  without 
significance),  "He  strictly  charged  his  disciples  and  com- 
manded them  to  tell  no  man  that  he  was  the  Christ."*  If 
the  disciples  had  only  kept  that  injunction  instead  of  spending 
their  lives  in  reversing  it,  Christendom,  I  am  tempted  to 
think,  might  have  possessed  a  purer  record  of  genuine  revela- 
tion, instead  of  a  mixed  text  of  divine  truth  and  false  apocalypse. 
For,  the  first  deforming  mask,  the  first  robe  of  hopeless  dis- 
guise, under  which  the  real  personality  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
disappeared  from  sight,  were  placed  upon  him  by  this  very  doc- 
trine which  was  not  to  go  forth, — that  he  was  the  Messiah. 
It  has  corrupted  the  interpretation  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  degraded  the  sublimest  religious  literature  of  the  ancient 
world  into  a  book  of  magic  and  a  tissue  of  riddles.  It  has 
spoiled  the  very  composition  of  the  New  Testament,  and,  both 
in  its  letters  and  its  narratives,  has  made  the  highest  inilu- 
ence  ever  shed  upon  humanity  subservient  to  the  proof  of 
untenable  positions  and  the  establishment  of  unreal  relations. 
Knowing  as  we  do,  that  Messiah  was  but  the  figure  of  an 
Israelitish  dream,  what  matters  it  to  us  English  Gentiles  to- 
day whether  its  shadowy  features  were  more  or  less  recalled 
to  mind  b}'  acts  and  words  of  the  Galilean  prophet  ?  Tell  us 
only,  we  are  apt  to  cry,  the  things  he  really  said  and  did : 
and  how  far  they  fitted  in  with  your  lost  ideal  may  be  left 
untold,  as  belonging  to  your  life  and  not  to  lih.  Yet,  how- 
ever natural  this  thought  may  be  to  us,  when  we  grow 
impatient  of  the  strange  evidence  which  the  demons  and  the 
prophets  are  said  to  give  to  his  Messiahship,  it  is  hasty  and 
inconsiderate.  For,  had  it  not  been  for  this  Jewish  con- 
ception of  him,  we  should  probably  have  had  210  life  of  him 
at  all.  It  is  chiefly  in  this  primitive  school  of  disciples, 
gathered  in  the  upper  chamber  at  Jerusalem,  that  the  interest 
felt  in  him  was  essentially  personal,  and  hung  around  his 
image  in  the  past,  and  watched  his  steps,  and  listened  for  the 
echoes  of  his  words,  to  detect  under  his  disguise  the  traces 
of  what  he  was  and  was  to  be.     In  the  larger  gospel  of  Paul, 

*  Luke  ix.  21.     :\Iatt.  xvi.  20.  •   •, 


330  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

which  swept  over  the  Gentib  world  and  ultimately  reduced 
the  original  community  to  the  position  of  a  sect,  the  biography 
of  Jesus,  the  traits  of  his  mind,  the  story  of  his  ministry, 
play  no  part  at  all :  it  is  from  heaven,  after  he  has  done  with 
the  hills  of  Galilee  and  the  courts  of  the  temple,  that  he 
begins  with  his  last  apostle ;  and  it  is  in  heaven  alone  that 
that  apostle  knows  anything  of  him,— in  his  glorified  state 
and  immortal  function,  and  not  in  the  simple  humanity  and 
prefatory  affections  of  his  career  below.  The  Pauline  gospel 
therefore  opens  where  the  others  cease.  And  had  their  nar- 
rative not  pre-existed,  the  fourth  gospel  could  scarcely  have 
been  ;  for  it  does  but  spiritualize  and  reconstruct,  with  change 
of  scene  and  interweaving  of  new  incidents,  a  portion  of  their 
historical  material ;  working  it  up  into  the  service  of  a  later 
and  more  transcendental  doctrine.  That  we  have  memoirs 
of  Jesus  at  all  we  owe  therefore  to  the  very  theory  about 
him  which  has  so  much  coloured  and  distorted  them ;  and 
we  must  accept  the  inevitable  human  condition,  and  patiently 
strip  off  the  disfiguring  folds  of  contemporary  thought,  and 
gain  what  glimpses  we  can  of  the  pure  reality  within. 

Those  to  Avhom  the  personal  figure  of  Jesus  still  appears 
beautiful  and  sacred  are  often  said  to  substitute  for  the 
reality  an  ideal  of  their  own  ;  because  they  rely  on  a  small 
selection  of  the  deepest  sayings  and  the  most  pathetic  in- 
cidents, as  if  these  were  all,  and  refuse  to  balance  against 
them  the  countervailing  mass  of  questionable  pretension  and 
false  prediction  and  habitual  exorcism  which  the  narrative 
presents.  The  charge  would  be  unanswerable,  if  the  story 
were  all  upon  one  level,  and  the  credibility  were  equal  of  the 
part  that  is  taken  and  the  part  that  is  left.  But  this  could 
only  be  the  case  if  the  gospels  were  the  products  of  pure 
history,  with  the  risks  of  error  impartially  distributed  over 
their  whole  surface.  What  however  is  the  fact  respecting 
(let  us  say)  the  first  of  them  ?  (in  the  order,  that  is,  not  of 
time,  but  of  place  in  the  canon.)  It  is  compiled  throughout 
in  a  dogmatic  interest,  and  is  historical  in  the  same  way  as 
the  recital  of  an  advocate  shaped  for  the  support  of  the  case 
he  undertakes  to  plead.  The  position  which  it  aims  to  estab- 
lish, viz.,  that  the  life  it  relates  is  that  of  the  future  Messiah, 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON   OF  JESUS.        331 

is  present  everjnvhere  :  it  supplies  the  principle  of  selection 
with  which  the  writer  passes  through  the  traditions  and 
records  ready  to  his  hand :  he  drops  as  irrelevant  whatever 
does  not  help  his  thesis :  he  weaves  together  exclusively  the 
incidents  and  sayings  which  admit  of  being  turned  to  its 
support.  And  when  we  remember  that  ere  the  Aramaic 
copy  of  the  Gospel  was  put  together,  forty  years  separated  the 
writer  from  the  latest  event  which  he  records,  and  that  our 
Greek  edition  is  in  parts  a  generation  later  still ;  and  that 
during  all  that  time  the  same  Messianic  belief  had  been  busy 
among  the  memorials  floating  in  the  air,  sifting  the  very 
leaves  that  drifted  to  the  compiler's  feet,  the  only  wonder  is 
that,  with  so  strong  a  set  of  the  wind,  any  shred  of  history 
should  have  slipped  beyond  the  margin  and  be  found  upon 
the  field  outside.  If  here  and  there,  in  the  intervals  of  the 
compiler's  logical  vigilance,  words  that  transcend  his  theory 
or  incidents  that  contradict  it  lie  embedded  in  his  story,  the 
truth  is  betrayed  by  the  only  signs  of  which  the  case  admits  ; 
and  such  rare  instances,  like  the  solitary  organic  form  de- 
tected in  rocks  that  never  showed  such  traces  before,  may  tell 
a  story  of  the  past  significant  out  of  all  proportion  to  their 
size.  It  is  only  by  reasoning  from  such  internal  marks,  that 
we  can  ever  hope  to  recover  the  simple  outline  of  the  truth : 
for  our  gospels,  instead  of  securmg  to  us,  as  commonly  sup- 
posed, the  personal  testimony  of  reliable  eye-witnesses,  are 
really  (as  in  part  already  shown)  of  unknown  source,  of 
mixed  material,  and  to  no  small  extent  of  gradual  growth. 
They  are  essentially  anonymous  compilations,  without  re- 
sponsible authorship ;  and  do  but  collect  into  a  focus  the  best 
elements  of  popular  tradition  respecting  the  author  of  Chris- 
tianity current  in  the  second  and  third  generation  of  his 
disciples.  If  we  want  an  earlier  word  than  this,  we  have  it 
in  the  letters  of  Paul ;  but  there,  Christ  is  already  in  heaven, 
and  we  learn  nothing  of  his  ministry  on  earth. 

That  the  Messianic  theory  of  the  person  of  Jesus  was  made 
for  him,  and  palmed  upon  him  by  his  followers,  and  was  not 
his  own,  appears  to  me  a  reasonable  inference  from  several 
slight  but  speaking  indications.  The  difliculty,  however,  of 
penetrating  to  the  truth  on  this  matter  is  so  cousiderablo  thai 


332  SEVERANCE    OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

the  prevailing  critical  verdict  on  the  other  side  is  by  no  means 
surprising.*  Our  only  sources  of  evidence  are  the  synoptical 
gospels,  proceeding,  even  in  their  oldest  constituents,  from  dis- 
ciples who  had  long  convinced  themselves,  not  only  that  Jesus 
was  the  appointed  Messiah,  but  that  he  knew  himself  to  be  so, 
and  gave  sufficient  signs  of  his  authority  as  such.  Looking 
back  on  his  earthly  ministry  through  this  posterior  conviction, 
they  viewed  all  things  in  its  light ;  it  served  as  the  interpreting 
medium  to  all  the  historical  elements  of  the  current  tradition, 
assimilating  its  pictures  of  the  past  to  the  later  version  of 
their  meaning.  AMien  once  they  had  learned  to  explain  away 
the  disheartening  features  of  his  life  and  thought,  his  fatal 
failure  and  unresisted  death,  and  found  in  them  just  what 
oiujht  to  have  happened  in  order  to  prove  what  they  seemed  to 
disprove,  the  whole  story  would  assume  a  new  aspect;  and 
whatever  they  missed  in  it,  or  found  to  disappoint  and  shock 
them,  woald  appear  but  as  part  of  an  intended  scheme,  con- 
sciously carried  out  in  obedience  to  the  divine  will.  No  doubt 
would  longer  be  entertained  that  Jesus  saw  everything  and 
chose  everything  that  met  him  on  the  way ;  and  no  hesitation 
be  felt  about  making  him  speak  out  what  he  really  was,  and 
reading  into  his  occasional  words  of  pathetic  foreboding  defi- 
nite predictions  of  the  tragedy  on  Calvary.  Were  the  gospels 
miiformlij  suffused  with  the  colouring  of  a  later  time,  as  they 
would  be  were  they  the  production  of  that  time  alone,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  withdrav/  the  veil  that  dimmed  the  historic 
truth.  Since,  however,  they  are  composite  works,  not  only 
with  their  several  characteristics,  but  each  put  together  from 
successive  layers  of  tradition,  the  more  recent  overlying  the 
oldest,  they  admit  of  being  dealt  with  like  a  palimpsest  MS., 
on  which  the  underwritten  characters  are  indelible  by  the 
process  which  washes  out  the  superficial  text.  There  is  a 
corresponding  critical  chemistry  which  is  not  without  re- 
sources for  recovering  at  least  some  fragments  of  the  first 
faithful  record. 

*  Harnack,  for  instance,  says,  "  Dass  Jesus  sich  selbst  als  den  Messias 
bezeichnet  hat,  ist  von  einigen  Kritikern — jiingst  nocli  von  Havet  Le  Chris- 
tianisme  et  ses  Origines,  T.  iy.l884, 15  ff — in  Abrede  gestellt  worden.  AUein 
dieses  Stiick  der  evangelischen  Ueberlieferung  scheiut  mir  auch  die  schiirfsta 
Priifung  auszuJialten."     Lehrbuch  d.  Dogmcngcscliichte,  I.  57,  58,  note. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        333 

It  is  usual  to  assume  that  the  several  titles  ^on  of  Man, 
Son  of  David,  Son  of  God,  are  interchangeal)le  as  names  of 
the  Messiah,  and  that  each,  when  appropriated,  carries  in  it 
precisely  the  same  official  claim  as  the  others.  And  this  is 
true,  when  we  are  speaking  of  the  apostolic  age,  and  the  usage 
of  its  missionaries  and  churches ;  true  therefore  of  the  mean- 
ing attached  to  these  phrases  by  the  writers  or  editors  of  the 
synoptical  gospels.  But  that  it  is  not  unconditionally  true  of 
the  prior  age  of  which  they  tell  the  story  they  unconsciously 
betray  b}^  an  unequal  use  of  the  terms  that  is  plainly  not 
accidental.  Thus,  the  phrase  '  Son  of  God '  received  its 
Messianic  significance  from  the  Christians  themselves ;  neither 
in  the  true  text  of  the  anterior  apocalyptic  literature,  nor  in 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  does  it  ever  appear  in  that  sense ;  and 
in  the  oldest  gospel  (Mark),  it  is  a  title  which  only  beings 
of  superhuman  insight — the  demons  he  cast  out,*  and  the 
Satan  who  tempted  him,t  are  described  as  applying  to  Jesus. 
One  exception  indeed  is  reported  in  the  High  Priest's  question 
to  Jesus,  "  Art  thou  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  Blessed?  "  and 
the  affirmative  reply,  t  It  is  hard  to  reconcile  this  public 
avowal  with  the  repeated  shrinking  from  this  claim,  and 
absolute  prohibition  to  make  it  on  his  behalf.  And  when  we 
realize  the  conditions  under  which  the  High  Priest's  examina- 
tion took  i^lace,  that  no  friendly  witness  was  present  but  Peter, 
who  was  not  within  hearing ;  when  further  we  remember  that, 
ere  it  could  be  set  down  as  matter  of  history,  it  had  become 
the  equal  wish  of  Jewish  accusers  and  of  Christian  disciples 
to  fasten  upon  the  crucified  the  highest  Messianic  pretensions, 
the  one  as  proof  of  imposture,  the  other  as  a  warrant  for  their 
faith ;  it  may  be  reasonably  doubted  whether  dependence  can 
be  placed  upon  the  accuracy  of  an  exceptional  detail.  The 
total  al)sence  from  the  fourth  Gospel's  report,  of  any  question 
about  the  Mcssiahship  (on  which,  in  the  synoptists,  the  whole 
judicial  sentence  hangs)  shows  how  great  maybe  the  influence 
of  an  evangelist's  preconception  on  the  colouring  of  his  nar- 
rative. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  remark  that   in  tli(>  only  other 
instance  of  the  phrase,  viz.,  the  centurion's  exclamation  be- 

♦  Mark  iii.  11.  t  ^^att.  iv.  3,  6.  Z  Mark  .\iv.  CI,  62. 


334         SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

neath  the  cross,  "Surely  this  was  a  Son  of  God,"*  the 
Eoman  speaker  can  have  had  no  Messianic  meaning,  but 
only  one  compatible  with  his  heathen  conception  of  divine 
things. 

In  truth,  the  name  "  Son  of  God  "  became  appropriate  to 
Jesus  in  virtue,  not  of  the  Messianic  office,  but  of  the  heavenly 
nature,  discovered  in  his  person:  and  Avas,  therefore,  first 
freely  given  to  him  by  his  disciples  after  his  passage  to  im- 
mortal life.  This  is  strongly  marked  by  the  Apostle  Paul's 
distinction, — that  he  was  "  born  of  the  seed  of  David  according 
to  the  flesh,  but  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power 
according  to  the  spirit  of  holiness,  by  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead."  t  It  was  the  spiritual  constitution  of  beings  more 
than  human  which  was  conceived  to  bring  their  nature  into 
antithesis  with  the  animal  life  and  affinity  with  the  essence 
of  God, — an  affinity  that  might  be  abused  by  fallen  spirits  to 
their  perdition,  or  with  the  faithful  turn  to  undying  blessed- 
ness. When  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Daniel  describes  the 
fourth  angelic  figure  seen  in  the  fiery  furnace  with  the  three 
intended  martyrs,  he  says  that  "  his  aspect  is  like  a  Son  of 
God."  1  If  the  plan  of  the  Messiahship  had  been  different, 
and  had  fulfilled  itself  on  earth  alone,  in  the  person  and  the 
career  of  another  David,  only  with  wider  dominion  and  more 
glorious  reign,  he  would  hardly  have  received  the  title  *'  Son 
of  God."  It  is  specifically  due  to  the  Christ  in  heaven ;  in- 
vested now  with  some  glorious  form  of  light,  and  capable  of 
being  revealed  in  inward  vision  to  the  spiritualized  minds  of 
men.  This  title,  therefore,  by  its  very  nature,  posthumously 
gained  its  place  among  the  predicates  of  Jesus. 

When  once  "  the  heavens  had  received  him,"  and  revealed 
his  higher  nature,  the  question  could  not  fail  to  present  itself, 
u-Jtcn  did  this  divine  affinity,  this  enrolment  in  the  ranks  of 
spiritual  life,  take  its  origin  ?  for  it  is  not  said,  and  it  was  not 
thought,  that  by  his  resurrection  he  became,  but  only  that  he 
was  '  declared '  the  '  Son  of  God  '  ;  and  if  the  fact  were 
already  there,  it  was  impossible  to  repress  the  inquiry,  '  how 
did  it  arise  '  ?  at  what  date  did  the  Divine  element  take 
possession  of  that  transient  human  personality  ?  and  where 
*  Mark  x\.  3d.  f  Rom.  i.  i.  *  Daniel  iii.  25. 


Chnp.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS. 


JJ3 


Tv'as  it  before '?  The  earliest  reply  undoubtedlj'  was,  the  Spirit 
of  God  descended  and  united  itself  with  him  ai  his  haptism; 
the  tradition  assumed  the  form  preserved  in  the  Ebionite 
gospel,*  and  twice  quoted  by  Justin  Martyr, t  that  as  the 
Spirit  alighted  on  him,  a  voice  from  heaven  said,  '  Thou  art 
my  son,  this  day  have  I  begotten  thee.'  The  filiation  consists 
in  the  communication  of  the  Divine  spirit,  and  is  synchronous 
with  it.  This  Messianic  application  of  Psalm  ii.  is,  I  believe, 
a  purely  Christian  invention ;  and  had  probably  the  effect, 
when  the  accounts  of  the  baptism  came  to  be  written,  of 
carrying  back  the  title  '  Son  of  God '  from  the  heavenly  to 
the  earthly  life  of  Jesus. 

The  secret  of  this  godlike  essence  in  him  was  supposed  to 
be  instinctively  read  by  the  superhuman  intelligence  of  the 
evil  spirits  exorcised  by  him ;  so  that  they  could  cry  out  in 
their  dismay,  'Art  thou  come  to  destroy  us"?  I  know  thee, 
who  thou  art,  the  holy  one  of  God.'t  '  What  have  I  to  do 
with  thee,  thou  Son  of  the  most  High  God  "?'  §  '  Thou  art  the 
Son  of  God.'il  But  from  his  sane  countrymen  we  do  not 
hear  this  mode  of  address  :  it  is  as  the  '  Son  of  David  '  that 
they  own  his  Messiahship,  and  appeal  to  his  compassion. 
The  blind  who  follow  him  on  the  way,  till  he  stops  and  touches 
their  ej^es  ;1i  the  Canaanitish  woman,  who,  for  her  suffering 
child,  prays  for  the  crumbs  of  mercy  that  may  fall  from 
Israel's  table  ;**  the  multitudes,  astounded  when  the  blind 
mute  both  spake  and  saw  ;f  f  or  descending  the  hill  to  Jeru- 
salem with  cries  of  Hosanna  :  1 1  all,  in  short,  who  represent 
the  vernacular  speech  of  the  time  and  place,  address  their 
prayers  and  their  enthusiasm  to  him  as  the  '  Son  of  David.' 
This  phrase  is  undoubtedly  the  nucleus  of  the  popular  pre- 
Christian  Messianic  faith. 

In  speaking  of  himself  Jesus  lialiitually  employs  the 
remaining  expression  '  Son  of  Man  '  :  and  on  its  meaning, 
when  thus  appropriated,  depends  the  question  as  to  the  range 


*  See   Hilgenfcld's  Nov.  Test,  extra   Canoncm  Recex^tum.   Evaug.  sec. 
Hebvisos,  &c.  II.  Ebion.  Evaug.  pp.  34,  3G. 

t  Dial,  cum  Tiyph.  C.  88,  31G  D.  aud  103,  331  B.  X  ^lark.  i.  24. 

§  Mark  v.  7.  ||  Luke  iv.  41.  U  ^latt.  ix.  27. 

•*  Matt.  XV.  22.  tt  Matt.  xii.  22.  tX  Matt.  xx-i.  9. 


336  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

and  character  of  his  self-conscious  mission.  That  for  the 
evangehsts  themselves  it  had  settled  into  its  Messianic  sense, 
and  that  they  attributed  the  same  to  him  is  not  disputed.  The 
point  to  be  determined  is  whether  this  is  historically  true,  or 
is  a  Christian  afterthought  thrown  back  upon  the  personal 
ministry  of  Jesus.  The  previous  history  of  this  phrase  cer- 
tainly gave  it  sufficient  elasticity  to  leave  room  for  reasonable 
doubt.  The  use  of  it  as  the  name  of  a  personal  Messiah  was 
supposed  to  be  sanctioned  by  the  pseudo-prophecies  of  Daniel, 
but  was  drawn  thence  only  by  a  misinterpretation  of  the 
author's  symbols.  As  the  Seer  has  described  successive 
heathen  empires — Babylonian,  Median,  Persian,  Macedonian, 
— under  the  image  of  brute  forms,  the  lion,  the  bear,  the  ram, 
the  goat, — so  does  he  contrast  with  them  the  hoped-for 
kingdom  of  righteousness  reserved  for  "  the  saints  of  the  Most 
High,"  under  the  superior  image  of  Humanity  embodied  in 
the  *'  likeness  of  a  Son  of  Man  :  "*  of  a  iwsonal  Agent  he  no 
more  speaks  in  this  symbol  than  in  the  previous  cases  of 
representative  animals.  And  where,  as  in  the  vision  by  the 
river  Ulai;f  and  in  that  by  the  Tigris,!  an  individual  figure 
is  introduced  instead  of  a  generic  type,  it  is  not  any  Messiah, 
but,  in  the  one  case,  God  himself,  who  speaks — in  the  other,  the 
archangel  Gabriel,  Michael's  Trpw-aytuvtarrje  in  the  wars  of  the 
upper  world.  §  "Whether  the  misinterpretation  of  these  visions 
which  appropriated  the  phrase  '  Son  of  Man  '  to  a  supposed 
personal  Head  of  the  future  theocracy  was  prechristian,  and 
furnished  the  disciples  in  Palestine  with  a  familiar  Messianic 
title,  cannot  be  conclusively  determined.  In  the  Book  of 
Enoch  it  is  similarly  applied :  "Beside  the  Ancient  of  Days 
there  sits  another,  whose  countenance  is  as  the  face  of  a  man, 
full  of  grace,  like  one  of  the  heavenly  angels  :  this  is  the 
Son  of  Man  :  "i;  "the  Son  of  Man  was  named  by  the  Ancient 
of  Days  before  the  world  was."^  But  there  is  much  reason 
to  suspect  that  the  section  in  which  this  language  occurs  is  a 
Christian  addition  to  the  original  work ;  and  the  text,  when 

*  Dan.  vii.  13,  18,  22,  27.  f  Dan.  viii.  +  Dan.  x.,  xi. 

§  For  fuller  exposition  see  Early  History  of  Messianic  Ideas.  National 
Review,  April,  1863,  pp.  471-476 :  and  more  at  large  Drummond's  Jewish 
Messiah.     B.  II.  ch.  vii. 

il  :^v.     Das  Buch  Henoch.  Dillmanu.  •[  xlviii.  1,  scnq. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         337 

critically  sifted,  becomes  divested  of  the  characteristic  evangelic 
phraseology.  The  known  Jewish  literature  prior  to  our  era, 
whether  within  or  without  the  canonical  Hebrew  scriptures, 
throws  no  satisfactory  light  on  the  Messianic  use  of  the  term 
"  Son  of  Man." 

Two  other  applications  of  the  phrase,  however,  are  perfectly 
clear.  It  is  used  as  a  common  noun,  to  denote  any  member  of  the 
human  race  ;  and  it  is  given  to  a  selected  individual,  employed 
as  the  herald  of  a  Divine  message.  In  the  former  sense  the 
Psalmist  says,  "What  is  w.an  that  thou  art  mindful  of  him, 
and  the  son  of  man  that  thou  visitest  him?"*  and  the  answer 
of  Job,  "the  stars  are  not  pure  in  his  sight ;  how  much  less 
man  that  is  a  worm,  and  the  son  of  man  that  is  a  worm?  "t 
Constant  familiarity  with  this  generic  sense  so  completely 
obliterated,  in  the  minds  of  those  who  used  it,  all  separate 
reference  to  the  component  elements  of  the  phrase  that  in  the 
Syriac  version  of  St.  Paul's  1  Cor.  xv.  45,  the  curious  render- 
ing occurs,  "Adam,  the  first  son  of  man,  became  a  living 
soul !  "  In  this  application  the  phrase  passes  into  the  gospels 
also ;  else,  from  the  answer  "  the  sabbath  was  made  for  man, 
not  man  for  the  sabbath,"  the  inference  could  not  be  drawn, 
"  therefore  the  son  of  man  is  lord  even  of  the  sabbath."! 

The  individualized  use  of  the  phrase  in  prechristian  litera- 
ture occurs  exclusively  in  Ezekiel ;  where  the  prophet,  in 
receiving  a  commission,  is  invariably  accosted  by  Jehovah, 
"  thou  son  of  Man."  It  is  no  doubt  possible  to  construe  tliis 
address  also  into  the  mere  equivalent  of  "  0  man  !  "  Init  in- 
variably connected  as  it  is  with  the  initiative  of  a  special 
prophetic  function,  it  can  hardly  fail  to  carry  in  it  some  ad- 
ditional connotation  relative  to  the  Seer's  ofiice  :  especially 
as  it  is  so  uniformly  adhered  to  that  it  occurs  eighty-nine 
times  in  this  single  book,  while  there  are  but  eleven  instances 
of  the  phrase  in  its  general  sense  throughout  tlie  previous 
Hebrew  scriptures.  The  supplementary  idea  is  probably  no 
more  than  an  intensification,  in  the  awful  presence  and  com- 
munion of  the  Most  Higli,  of  the  conscious  weakness,  un- 
worthiness,  nothingness,  of  the  human  agent,  when  called  to 

*  viii.  4.  t  XXV.  6. 

*  Mark  ii.  27,  28.     Cf.  Matt.  xii.  8,  Luke  vi.  5. 


338  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

be  the  organ  of  a  Divine  intent :  that  so  feeble  a  voice  should 
be  charged  with  the  mighty  word  of  God  could  but  cast  the 
prophet  down  in  utter  dependence,  save  that  it  also  snatched 
him  upwards  into  an  unfailing  trust.  As  the  human  figure, 
brought  by  the  pseudo-Daniel  into  comparison  with  the  lower 
animal  forms,  serves  for  the  symbol  of  rational  and  moral 
majesty,  so,  when  placed  in  the  person  of  Ezeldel,  face  to 
face  with  the  infinite  perfection,  is  it  emptied  of  all  its  sem- 
blance of  dignity,  and  "talking  no  more  so  exceeding  proudly," 
can  only  yield  itself  to  be  disposed  of  by  the  hand  of  God,  and 
move  with  lowly  and  equal  sympathy  among  the  brotherhood 
of  mankind.  This  is  probably  the  thought  which  commended 
the  term  "  Son  of  Man  "  to  the  preference  of  Jesus  ;  and  as 
it  thus  comes  from  his  lips,  it  exactly  expresses  the  trustful 
self-surrender,  the  blended  fearlessness  and  tenderness  before 
men,  the  shrinking  from  words  of  praise,  "Why  callest  thou 
me  good?  ",  the  pathetic  calmness  of  the  uplooking  and  up- 
lifting life,  which  speak  in  all  the  features  of  his  portraiture. 
In  adopting  this  name  he  takes  the  level,  not  of  the  Messianic 
grandeur,  with  its  political  triumphs  and  earthly  glories,  not 
of  the  heir  of  David  destined  to  crown  and  render  millennial 
the  splendour  of  his  reign,  but  of  simple  Humanity  in  its 
essence  and  without  its  trappings,  endowed  and  called  to  be 
the  child  of  God,  but  through  the  discipline  of  many  a  need 
and  sorrow  and  temptation.  It  is  in  harmony  with  this 
attitude  of  character  and  conception  of  his  mission,  that  he 
discouraged  from  following  him  all  those  who  were  not  pre- 
pared to  move  with  him  on  the  same  level  of  the  common  lot, 
and  find  the  beauty  and  sanctity  of  life  in  its  inner  affections 
and  possibilities,  and  not  in  its  outward  possessions ;  neither 
the  rich  who  could  not  forego  his  treasures,  nor  the  poor  who 
could  not  face  further  privation,  would  he  have  in  his  train, 
"  The  foxes  have  holes,  the  birds  of  the  air  have  nests,  but  the 
Son  of  Man  hath  not  where  to  lay  his  head."  *  '  The  prophet, 
who  has  only  to  bear  the  message  of  heaven  to  his  followers, 
must  live  as  a  man  among  men,  taking  no  more  account  than 
God  himself  of  any  one's  lot  or  of  his  own  :  and  if  you  would 

*  IMatt.  viii.  20.     See  an  interesting  essay  by  Ferd.  Chr.  Baur,  in  Hilgen- 
feld's  Zeitschrif t  fur  wissenschaftliche  Theologie.     1860 :  pp.  274,  scgg- 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        339 

share  his  work,  you  must,  with  him,  be  ready  to  dispense  with 
even  the  shelter  and  security  of  the  creatures  of  the  field  and 
air.'  This  sympathetic  self-identification  with  the  lowliest 
conditions  of  human  life,  in  the  service  of  its  divine  ends, 
appears  to  me  truer  both  to  the  connection  of  the  passage  and 
the  characteristics  of  Jesus,  than  the  evangelist's  own  apparent 
construction,  viz.,  that  Jesus,  in  words  of  touching  lament, 
was  here  contrasting  the  protected  lot  of  the  lower  creation 
with  the  homeless  exposure  and  prospective  sufferings  of  the 
King  of  glory  in  his  disguise. 

If,  then,  Jesus  occasionally  spoke  of  himself  as  the  "  Son  of 
Man,"  it  by  no  means  implied  any  Messianic  claim.  It  might, 
on  the  contrary,  be  intended  to  emphasize  the  very  features  of 
his  life  and  love  which  are  least  congenial  with  the  national 
ideal.  That  in  the  days  of  his  Galilean  ministry  it  had  not 
passed  into  a  Messianic  title  is  proved  by  the  startling  effect 
of  Peter's  first  recognition  of  him  as  "  the  Christ ;  "  or,  as 
Luke  has  it,  "the  Christ  of  God;"  or,  as  Matthew  has  it, 
"  the  Christ,  the  son  of  the  living  God."*  The  apostle's  out- 
spoken declaration  is  in  answer  to  the  questions,  "  Who  do 
men  say  that  I  am  ?  "  and  "  Whom  say  ye  that  I  am?  "  or, 
as  Matthew  puts  the  former,  "  WI10  do  men  say  that  I,  the 
Son  of  Man,  am  ?  "  Now,  if  the  term  '•'  Son  of  Man,"  was 
only  a  synonym  for  "  the  Christ,"  and  Jesus  had  been 
habitually  applying  it  to  himself  through  the  previous  year 
or  years,  there  is  no  room  for  his  question  addressed  to  them, 
and  their  answer  was  a  mere  tautology ;  and  if  he  actually 
framed  the  question  in  Matthew's  words:  "I,  the  Son  of 
Man,"  he  dictated  the  very  answer  which,  when  uttered,  pro- 
duced so  intense  a  sensation,  and  was  ordered  to  be  suppressed 
and  told  to  no  man.  His  appr()})riation  of  the  phrase,  in 
public  address  and  in  private  converse,  had  left  the  way  open 
to  various  interpretations  of  the  character  in  which  he  ap- 
peared :  and  needed  the  supplementary  influence  of  his  per- 
sonality on  his  constant  attendants  to  lift  them  into  the  liopc 
to  which  Peter  had  given  voice. 

To  this  memoral)le  turning-point  in  the  life  of  .K'sus  1 
shall  have  to  return  for  another  purpose :  at  present  I  draw 

*  3Iark  viii.  29  ;  Luke  ix.  20 ;  Matt.  xvi.  IG. 

Z    2 


,;340  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

only  the  inference  that  at  that  date  the  phrase  "  Son  of  Man  " 
-was  not  tantamount  to  "the  Messiah."  Yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  numerous  discom'ses  attributed  to  Jesus  by  the 
evangehsts  the  term  is  undoubtedly  restricted  to  this  mean- 
ing:  the  "  Son  of  Man  shall  send  forth  his  angels:  "*  then 
shall  they  see  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  clouds  with  great 
power  and  glory :" t  "him  shah  the  Son  of  Man  confess 
before  the  angels  of  God."  X  To  such  passages  as  these  it  is 
impossible  to  apply  Holtzmann's  remark  that  the  phrase 
"Son  of  Man"  is  a  vcrhiillender  Name,^  covering  one  knows 
not  what  tender  and  mystical  significance  :  it  is  distinctly 
Messianic,  referring,  moreover,  to  the  least  spiritual  eschato- 
logical  features  of  the  Jewish  expectation.  What  then  are  we 
to  say  ?  could  this  meaning  be  absent  from  the  phrase  during 
the  first  part  of  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  yet  get  exclusive 
possession  of  it  before  the  close  ?  Not  so  :  for  it  is  found  in. 
discourses  on  both  sides  of  Peter's  confession,  and,  if  you 
follow  Matthev^f  rather  than  Mark,  equally  all  through.  To 
allow  of  such  a  change  in  the  use  of  a  current  term,  a  greater 
interval  is  needed  than  between  the  stages  of  a  fifteen  months' 
■ministry.  And  the  interval  will  be  found  between  the  date  of 
Jesus'  living  voice,  and  the  period  from  forty  to  seventy  years 
later,  during  wliich  our  synoptic  gospels  were  compiled.  In 
that  interval  the  first  disciples  and  their  Palestinian  converts 
had  wrought  out  their  doctrine,  that  Jesus,  now  reserved  in 
heaven,  was  to  be  Messiah,  and  that  the  kingdom  of  God 
which  his  earthly  life  had  been  spent  in  fore-announcing,  was 
to  be  realized  in  his  person.  And  at  the  same  time,  and 
through  the  century,  the  deepening  darkness  and  confusion  and 
ultimate  ruin  that  fell  upon  the  Jewish  state,  mustered  all  the 
wild  forces  of  fanaticism  in  Israel,  and  threw  insurrections  into 
the  hands  of  zealots,  and  left  religion  at  the  mercy  of  vision- 
ary seers.  How  prolific  the  time  was  in  apocalyptic  dreams, 
dazzling  with  glory  or  lurid  with  horrors,  the  Book  of 
Pievelation,  as  now  understood,  may  suffice  to  convince  us. 
The  strong  resemblance  between  the  national  sufierings  in  the 

•  Matt.  xiii.  41.  t  Mark  xiii.  26.  J  Luke  xii.  8. 

§  Lehrbuch  der  Einleitung  iu  das  Neue  Testament,  2'^  Aufl.,  1886,  S.  369. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        341 

Jewish  wars  Avith  Eome,  and  the  tragic  experiences  under 
Antiochus  Epiphanes,  would  naturally  place  the  Book  of 
Daniel  in  an  intenscr  light,  and  lead  men  to  seek  oracles 
there,  and  find  relief  from  an  afflicting  present  in  its  promise 
of  deliverance  for  the  faithful  people,  when  "  the  wise  shall 
shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament,  and  they  that  turn 
many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  for  ever  and  ever."  Nor  is 
it  any  wonder  if,  "  under  the  likeness  of  a  Son  of  Man,"  they 
saw,  not  simply  the  predicted  sway  of  a  true  Humanity,  hut 
a  personal  Head  to  the  saints  on  earth,  as  Michael  was  leader 
of  the  loyal  angels  in  the  conflicts  of  heaven.  It  was  during 
this  period  then, — I  conceive, — between  the  ministry  of  Jesus 
and  the  fall  of  the  Jewish  State, — that  the  term  "  Son  of  Man  " 
came  to  be  used  as  a  Messianic  title  ;  and  this  new  sense, 
having  once  usurped  the  phrase,  affected  the  composition 
of  the  Gospels  in  two  wa^'s.  The  evangelists,  themselves 
possessed  by  it,  and  unconscious  of  any  perversion,  threw  it 
back  upon  the  name  as  it  passed  from  the  lips  of  Jesus. 
And,  being  unaware  that  it  was  a  characteristic  expression 
of  his,  by  which  he  loved  to  designate  himself,  they  too 
readily  fitted  to  him  whatever  any  prophetic  writing  said 
that  the  Messianic  Son  of  Man  would  be  and  do ;  and 
hence  were  tempted  to  patch  his  discourses  with  shreds 
of  Jewish  apocalypse,  and  even  to  attribute  to  him, 
as  what  he  must  have  meant  and  might  have  said,  whole 
masses  of  eschatology,  borrowed  from  Israel,  in  which 
the  signs  of  the  "  Son  of  Man,"  on  his  coming  to 
conquer,  to  judge  and  to  reign,  are  unveiled  in  their 
succession,  and  identified  in  their  commencement  with  the 
events  passing  before  the  writer's  and  the  reader's  eye.  That 
the  expositions  of  "  last  things  "  in  the  sj-noptical  gospels  are 
just  as  much  Christianized  Jewish  apocalypse,  as  the  Book 
of  Revelation,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  doubt ;  though  the 
written  leaves  which  have  furnished  the  excerpts  have  fallen 
upon  the  stream  of  time,  and  been  swept  away  without  a 
name. 

Yet  not  entirely  without  a  trace.     Every  reader  who,  in  his 
study  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  lias  freed  himself  from  the  iin- 


342  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

historical  chronology  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  and  followed  the 
steps  of  his  ministry  under  the  guidance  of  the  synoptists, 
must  have  been  as  much  struck  by  the  inopportuneness  as 
touched  by  the  pathos  of  the  lament  over  Jerusalem,  whether 
uttered,  as  Luke  reports,*  while  Jesus  was  still  in  Herod's 
territory  on  the  eve  of  departure  for  Judaea,  or,  as  Matthew 
states,  t  in  the  Temple  courts,  on  the  first  day  of  his  arrival  at 
Jerusalem.  In  the  former  case,  it  is  spoken  in  the  Northern 
province,  while  as  yet  his  voice  has  never  been  heard  in  the 
city :  in  the  latter,  it  winds  up  his  first  day's  teaching  there. 
And  yet  in  both  its  burden  is  "  How  often  would  I  have 
gathered  thy  children  together,  as  a  hen  doth  gather  her 
brood  under  her  wings ;  and  ye  would  not ! "  Such  a 
reproach,  whether  flung  from  a  distance  by  a  stranger,  or 
coming  from  a  visitor  within  his  first  twenty-four  hours, 
would  be  simply  inane,  and  can  be  rendered  credible  by  no 
evangelist's  authority.  By  a  comparison,  however,  of  the  two 
evangelists,  the  passage  is  saved,  and  its  enigma  resolved. 
In  Matthew,  the  apostrophe  to  Jerusalem  is  introduced  by  the 
words,  "  I  send  unto  you  prophets  and  wise  men  and  scribes  : 
some  of  them  ye  will  kill  and  crucify  :  and  some  of  them  ye 
will  scourge  in  your  synagogues,  and  persecute  them  from  city 
to  city ;  that  upon  you  may  come  all  the  righteous  blood  shed 
upon  the  earth,  from  the  blood  of  Abel  the  righteous  unto  the 
blood  of  Zachariah,  son  of  Barachiah,  whom  ye  slew  between 
the  sanctuary  and  the  altar.  Verily,  I  say  unto  you,  all  these 
things  shall  come  upon  this  generation."  In  Luke,  this 
passage,  with  change  of  only  a  word  or  two,  has  been  already 
worked  up  into  an  earlier  discourse  at  a  Pharisee's  dinner 
table  in  Galilee  ;t  and  there  it  is  introduced,  not  as  spoken  by 
Jesus  in  jjroprid  jjersonCi,  but  as  a  quotation  of  Another' i 
words, — evidently  GocVs  :  "  Therefore  said  tlie  Wisdom  of  God, 
I  will  send  unto  them  prophets,"  &c.  The  s^jeaker,  therefore, 
who  has  so  often  appealed  to  the  Holy  city  and  its  perverse 
people  is  the  God  of  their  fathers,  their  providential  guide 
through  all  their  history.  The  only  question  is  what  is 
denoted  by  that  "  Wisdom  of  God  "  from  which  the  words  are 

*  xiii.  31-35.     Cf.  xi.  37-52  and  xix.  41-44. 
t  xxiii.  29-39.  i  ^d.  49-51. 


Chap,  ir.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         343 

cited.  Not  surely  the  canonical  Hebrew  scriptures,  which  are 
never  quoted  under  such  a  title,  and  which  do  not  contain  the 
passage  here  adduced.  The  phrase,  moreover,  must  cover  a 
much  more  recent  production  :  for  in  the  reproach  which  it 
utters  it  includes  as  its  last  term,  the  murder  "  between  the 
temple  and  the  altar"  (i.e.,  in  the  court  of  priests)  of 
Zachariah,  the  son  of  Baruch, — an  act  perpetrated,  as 
Josephus  tells  us,  "  in  the  midst  of  the  temple  "  by  two  of  the 
zealots  shortly  before  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  b}^  Titus.* 
The  disastrous  events  of  that  time,  interpreted  as  judgments 
on  the  past  and  omens  of  a  redeeming  future,  were  fruitful  in 
homilies  of  denunciation  and  oracles  of  prophecy, — fugitive 
fires  discharged  in  the  collision  of  despair  and  faith,  and 
kindling  both  wherever  they  touched.  That  one  of  these,  or 
a  collection  of  them,  should  receive  the  title  "  The  Wisdom  of 
God,"  is  accordant  with  the  taste  and  style  of  apocalyjjtic 
authorship.  That  the  impulse  to  produce  them  or  turn  them 
to  account  would  operate  alike  on  all  who  are  imbued  with  the 
Messianic  faith,  whether  simply  Jews  or  Jewish  Christians,  is 
obvious  :  the  difference  would  only  be  that  the  one  would 
ignore,  the  other  would  accept,  the  historic  episode  of  Jesus' 
life,  as  the  key  to  the  downfall  of  Jerusalem.  That  the  first 
evangelist  already  looked  back  upon  that  downfall  is  plain 
from  the  words,  "  Behold,  your  house  is  left  unto  you 
desolate."! 

We  have  here,  therefore,  an  example  of  quotation  by 
evangelists  from  an  apocalyptic  writing,  called  the  "Wisdom 
of  God,"  Jewish  in  essence.  Christian  in  application,  so  in- 
corporated with  their  biographical  narrative  as  to  be  thrown 
back  some  thirty -nine  years  before  its  origin,  and  appear  as  a 
vaticinium  ante  eventum.  The  upbraiding  of  Jerusalem  being 
thus  transferred  from  Jesus  who  is  supposed  to  cite  it,  to  God 
with  whom  it  sums  up  the  long  history  of  Israel,  is  no  longer 
out  of  character  in  its  manifold  indictment  of  unfaithfulness. 

*  Jewish  Wars.     B.  IV.  v,  4, 

t  Luke,  feeling  the  impossibility  of   attributing  tliis   sentence  to  Jesus, 
more  than  a  generation  before,  has  dropped  the  word  (prj^os  ;  escaping  the 
incongruity,  but  leaving  the  sentence  empty.     On  this  wliolc  passage,  sec  an 
excellent  paper  by  Strauss  in  Hilgcnfeld's  Zeitschrift  fiir  wisseuschaftliche 
Theologie.     18G3  ;  p.  8i,  scqq. 


344  SEVERANCE   OF  UN VI VINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

This  particular  citation  proves  no  more  than  that  the  trouhles 
of  the  perishing  Jewish  State  in  the  apostohc  and  post- 
apostohc  age  did  actually  produce  more  Messianic  literature 
than  has  come  down  to  us  by  name.  It  does  not  throw  light 
upon  the  part  which  the  phrase  "  Son  of  Man  "  plays  in 
such  writings.  But  it  provides  a  fund  from  which  a  reason- 
able explanation  may  be  drawn  of  the  remarkable  fact,  that 
this  phrase,  as  applied  by  Jesus  to  himself,  had  still  its  non- 
Messianic  sense,  while  in  the  eschatological  discourses  which 
worked  themselves  into  the  traditions  of  his  life  during  a  half 
century  of  Jewish  Christianit}^  the  Messianic  meaning  is  in 
full  possession.  I  believe  it  to  be  entirely  posthumous.  But 
as  we  have  no  contemporary  record,  and  are  dependent  on 
writers  with  whom  everything  was  fused  down  into  a  Messianic 
faith,  who  could  neither  speak  nor  let  speak  in  any  other 
sense,  the  evidence  can  only  be  indirect  and  reached  by 
critical  combinations.  Our  earliest  Christian  witness,  the 
apostle  Paul,  though  himself  imbued  with  the  Messianic 
belief,  even  to  its  doctrine  of  "  last  things,"  never  once  uses 
the  phrase  "  Son  of  Man."  By  the  sjaioptic  evangelists  it  is 
put  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus  on  about  thirty-two  occasions. 
Out  of  these  it  is  used  fifteen  times  not  of  himself,  but  as  of 
a  third  person.  In  all  the  remaining  instances  it  is  given  as 
applied  to  himself,  seven  times  in  a  Messianic  sense,  ten  times 
in  a  non-Messianic.  And,  on  comparing  the  parallel  passages 
in  the  three  gospels,  it  will  be  found  that  the  Messianic  pro- 
fession is  at  its  minimum,  or  has  its  most  modest  expression 
in  the  oldest,  Mark's.  Thus,  Peter's  confession  he  gives  in 
the  words  "  thou  art  the  Christ ;  "  Matthew  adds  "  the  Christ 
the  Son  of  the  living  God  ;  "  Luke,  "  the  Christ  of  God." 
And  in  the  account  of  the  entry  into  Jerusalem,  the  popular 
cry,  as  given  by  Mark,  is  "  Hosanna,  blessed  is  he  who 
cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,"  and  "  Blessed  is  the  king- 
dom that  cometh,^of  our  father  David ;  "  words  which 
imply  no  more  than  the  announcement  by  a  j^i'oj^hct  of  the 
coming  kingdom;  while  Matthew  has  it  "Hosanna  to  the 
Son  of  David  ,•  "  and  Luke,  "  blessed  is  the  King  that  cometh 
in  the  name  of  the  Lord  :  "  plainly  marking  the  growth  in 
the  tradition. 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        345 

The  gradual  loss  by  the  term  "  Son  of  Man,"  of  the  human 
meaning  in  the  Messianic,  is  indicated  by  this  further  peculi- 
arity of  the  oldest  gospel :  that  in  it  Peter's  confession  forma 
a  dividing  line  between  the  t^Y0  meanings,  starting  the 
Messianic  conception  and  quitting  that  of  Jesus  himself. 
Whereas  in  Matthew  and  Luke  the  official  sense  is  given  to 
the  phrase  before  as  well  as  after  that  date,  and  distributed 
equally  all  through  the  ministry.* 

*  Mark  ii.  10,  may  seem  uot  to  fall  under  this  rule.  Wlicn  Jesus,  intend- 
ing to  cure  the  palsied  man,  tells  him  "  Thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee,"  the 
scribes  ask  "  Who  is  this  that  spcaketh  blasphemy?  who  can  forgive  sins  but 
God  alone  ?  "  Jesus  replies,  '  Wliy  this  reasoning  ?  what  difference  does  it 
make  whether  I  say  '  Thy  sins  are  forgiven,'  or  '  Arise,  take  up  thy  bed  and 
walk'  ?  but  that  ye  may  know  that  the  '  Son  of  Man  '  hath  power  on  earth 
to  forgive  sins,  I  say  unto  thee  '  Arise,  take  up  thy  bed,  and  go  unto  thine 
house.' '  It  is  usually  supposed  that  Jesus  here  justifies  his  act  of  forgive- 
ness by  asserting  his  ilessianic  rank,  to  which  it  would  admittedly  be  appro- 
priate, and,  as  proof  of  his  competency,  offers  the  man's  discharge  from  his 
phj'sical  penalty.  In  this  view,  his  objectors  then  were  not  aware, — as  indeed 
their  question  Who  is  this  ?  implies, — that  he  spoke  as  Messiah  ;  else  they 
would  never  have  questioned  the  fitness  of  his  woi-ds  to  his  as.sumed  character. 
His  answer,  therefore,  consists  simply  in  telling  them  who  he  is :  he  virtually 
says,  '  Do  you  not  know  that  I  am  the  Christ?  '  giving  them  the  information 
under  the  name  "  the  Sou  of  Man."  This,  however,  is  not  the  way  in  which 
Jesus  treats  their  doubt.  If  it  were,  he  would  have  to  offer  proof  that  he 
was  "the  Son  of  IMan."  Instead  of  this,  he  proposes  to  prove  that  it  is 
within  the  competency  of  "  the  Son  of  JIau  "  "to  forgive  sins  on  earth,"  a 
point  undisputed  and  in  no  way  relevant,  if  "  Sou  of  Man"  means  Messiah, 
to  whose  office  the  judicial  function  primarily  belonged.  The  scribes'  objec- 
tion was  founded  upon  precisely  the  opposite  assumption,  viz.,  that  the 
unpretending  character  of  "  Son  of  Man  "  under  which,  like  Ezekiel,  he 
moved  among  his  people,  carried  in  it  no  authority  to  forgive  sins.  How 
does  he  answer  the  objection  ?  Sins  in  heaven  (i.e.,  in  their  .spiritual  aspect) 
whose  moral  heinousness,  relative  to  the  secret  conscience,  is  measurable  only 
to  the  Searcher  of  hearts,  are  certaiul}'  reserved  for  the  mercy  of  God  alone. 
But  sins  on  earth,  in  their  temporal  expression  by  visitations  of  incapacity 
and  suffering,  he  has  from  of  old  permitted  his  human  prophets  to  remit, 
and  when  such  a  sou  of  man  takes  pity  on  a  stricken  brother,  what  matters 
it  whether  he  goes  up  to  the  sentence  and  jironounces  it  thus  far  reduced, 
saying,  '  Herein,  the  sin  is  forgiven,'  or  whether  lie  goes  down  to  the  prison 
doors,  and  opening  them,  bids  the  captive  '  Arise  and  go  to  his  house '  ? 
Thus  understood,  Jesus  simply  tells  his  hearers,  '  I  speak  in  conformity  with 
your  preconception,  viz.,  that  at  the  back  of  all  physical  evil  there  lies  somo 
moral  cause  of  which  it  is  the  outward  mark  and  record.'  How  far  he  was 
himself  from  sharing  this  misconception,  how  ready,  on  fitting  occasions,  to 
protest  against  it,  is  attested  by  his  comments  on  the  fall  of  the  tower  of 
Siloam  (Luke  xiii.  \,ser[q.).  He  repudiates  the  idea  that  tlio  victims  cruslied 
by  it  were  suffering  execution  for  their  sins:  he  warns  his  licarers  against 
judging  either  others  or  themselves  by  what  happens  to  them  :  they  have  tho 


346  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

Thus  much  respecting  the  history  and  contents  of  the 
current  Messianic  terms  it  was  necessary  to  premise,  ere  we 
attempt  to  determine  for  how  much  of  the  claim  which  they 
seem  to  imply  Jesus  himself  can  be  deemed  responsible.  The 
materials  for  a  true  judgment  must  be  sought  in  the  synoptical 
gospels ;  and  yet  are  so  largely  moulded  by  conceptions  first 
blended  with  these  terms  in  and  after  the  apostolic  age,  that 
they  can  be  used  only  under  great  restrictions,  if  they  are  to 
lead  us  up  to  the  historical  figure  of  Jesus. 

The  foregoing  account  of  the  phrase  "  Son  of  Man,"  has 
against  it  the  serious  weight  of  Harnack's  authority,  who 
categorically  affirms  that  the  term  means  "nothing  else  than 
Messiah."*  If  this  be  so,  it  is  certain  that  Jesus,  who  indis- 
putably assumed  it  from  the  first,  gave  himself  out  for  "the 
Christ "  with  uniform  emphasis  from  the  baptism  to  the 
crucifixion  ;  and  yet  Harnack  himself  says,  in  a  note  imme- 
diately preceding,  "  From  the  Gospels  we  know  for  certain 
that  Jesus  did  not  come  forward  with  the  announcement. 
Believe  on  me,  for  I  am  Messiah."!  He  attached  himself  to 
the  mission  of  John  the  Baptist,  and  only  slowly  and  with 
reserve  prepared  his  adherents  for  anything  more  than  the 
repentance  in  expectation  of  the  kingdom.  To  escape  from 
the  contradiction  between  these  two  positions,  by  difl^erencing 
his  conception  of  the  Messiahship  from  the  popular  one,  is  to 
put  into  the  name  "  Son  of  Man  "  sometliiiu/  else  than  Messiah, 
and  so  to  retract  the  first  proposition.  The  theory,  however, 
of  a  gradual  disclosure  and  advance  of  Messianic  pretension 
has  a  plausibility  which  secures  it  an  increasing  amount  of 
critical   approval ;   and   in  particular   has   its   evidence  very 

inward  power  to  "  know  even  of  themselves  what  is  right  "  :  to  this  let  them 
look,  and  see  what  ihcy  arc,  and  not  mind  Jiotu  they  fare,  and  then  they  will 
never  mistake  calamities  for  judgments. 

Baur  gives  a  different  turn  to  the  dialogue  about  the  palsied  man,  founded 
on  the  closing  words  of  Matthew's  parallel  passage  (ix.  8),  "  the  multitude 
glorified  God,  who  had  given  such  authority  U7ito  men."  Taking  the  phrase 
son  of  man  as  simply  equivalent  to  man  without  any  special  reference  to 
Jesus  in  particular,  he  understood  the  lesson  inculcated  to  be  that  the  pure 
human  consciousness  places  man  in  such  a  relation  to  God  as  to  give  him  a 
well-grounded  trust  in  the  Divine  forgiveness  of  sins,  Hilgenfeld's  Zeitsch. 
1860.     282,  283. 

•  Lehrb.  d.  Dogmengeschichte,  p.  58,  note  2.  -j-  Ibid,  note  1. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES  OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         347 

skilfully  presented  by  Holtzmann  in  his  comparison  of  the 
gospels  of  Matthew  and  Mark.*  Its  plausibility  is  not  sur- 
prising ;  for  it  is  in  truth  the  very  theory  of  the  evangelists 
themselves, — at  least,  of  the  common  tradition  at  the  base  of 
their  work ;  and  it  is  easy  to  draw  out  of  their  text  the 
speculative  thread  on  which  they  have  constructed  it.  But 
the  question  still  lies  behind,  whether  the  assigned  series  of 
phenomena,  from  the  impersonal  message  ''the  Kingdom  of 
heaven  is  at  hand,"  to  the  climax  of  personal  faith  in  the 
messenger  as  himself  the  coming  King,  represents  a  progres- 
sive claim  asserted  by  him,  or  a  growth  of  belief  naturally 
matured  in  them  and  retrospectively  read  back  between  the 
lines  of  his  reported  life.  To  determine  which  of  these 
explanations  is  the  more  satisfactor}^  we  must  recur  to  the 
chief  landing-place  in  the  mmistry  of  Jesus,  the  scene  of 
Peter's  confession  near  Cesamea  Philippi. 

The  scene  of  his  ministry  opened  in  Galilee,  and  closed  in 
Jerusalem  ;  all  but  a  few  weeks  of  it  being  spent  in  his  native 
province,  in  the  fields  and  villages  around  Capernaum,  or  on 
the  hills  that  overlook  the  sea  of  Gennesaret.  Between  these 
two  unequal  periods  a  memorable  week  of  transition  is  inter- 
posed,—the  farewell  to  Galilee,— the  venture  upon  the  city  of 
the  priests.  It  could  in  no  case  be  an  ordinary  week  that  had 
so  critical  a  place ;  but  a  time  of  pause,  to  gaze  back  upon  a 
past  which  could  never  be  repeated  ;  and  a  time  of  misgiving, 
to  look  into  the  mists  of  a  future  which  he  could  not  pierce. 
In  brief,  three  things  are  said  to  mark  this  week :  (a.)  he  asks 
his  disciples  the  popular  opinion  of  his  person,  and  receives 
from  Peter  the  confession  that  he  is  the  Christ ;  (b.)  in  tlie 
same  breath  he  declares  to  them  his  impending  death  at 
Jerusalem ;  and  (c.)  six  days  after,  the  immortal  prophets  of 
the  old  time  meet  him  on  the  mount  of  transfiguration  and 
put  a  glory  into  that  death  by  speaking  to  him  of  it.  What- 
ever mythical  materials  may  be  embodied  in  this  report  of  a 
memorable  week,  there  are  certain  historical  elements  which 
must  be  admitted  as  the  necessary  base  of  its  very  existence. 
It  is  clear  that  (1.)  up  to  that  date,  i.e.,  through  the  whole  of 
his  career  except  seventeen   days,  no  word   had  been   ever 

*  Lehrbuch  d.  Eialeitung  iu  das  N.  T.  368,  369. 


348  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

breathed  about  his  Messiahship  ;  for  not  only  does  popular 
rumour  limit  itself  to  explanations  short  of  this,  but  even 
within  the  inner  circle  of  his  personal  attendants  it  is  only 
now  that  Peter's  boldness  itself  ventures  on  the  startling 
claim.  That  we  may  rely  on  this  I  conclude,  because  it  is  the 
story  told  by  the  oldest  evangelist  alone,  while  it  has  vanished 
from  the  others,  who  write  under  the  conception  that  Jesus 
acted  and  was  confessed  as  the  Christ  all  through.  The  later 
version  must  yield,  as  unhistorical,  if  only  through  its  uncon- 
scious inconsistency ;  and  Jesus  must  be  relieved,  for  the 
whole  period,  of  a  pretension  uncongenial  with  his  spiritual 
character,  and  the  source  of  all  that  is  perishable  in  the 
religion  which  bears  his  name.  Nor  does  this  affect  our 
estimate  of  himself  alone  ;  for  the  claim  having  not  been 
made  by  his  disciples  for  him,  any  more  than  by  him,  we  do 
them  wrong  if  we  suppose  them  to  have  become  followers  in 
his  train  through  hope  of  some  great  thing  in  the  "  Kingdom 
■of  our  father  David  ;  "  he  was  but  the  human  herald  of  a 
Divine  event ;  and  they  were  but  the  herald's  servants.  They 
were  drawn  to  him  and  held  fast  by  the  power  of  a  penetrat- 
ing and  sul)duing  personality,  the  effect  of  which  was  a 
mystery  to  themselves,  and  their  vain  attempts  to  solve  the 
mystery  have  left  us  the  unfortunate  legacy  of  a  Christian 
mythology. 

(2.)  From  the  same  date,  i.e.,  on  "  setting  his  face  to  go  to 
Jerusalem,"  Jesus  himself  experienced  forebodings  of  danger 
and  public  death,  sometimes  openly  expressed  to  his  disciples, 
oftener  perhaps  overheard  in  the  wrestlings  and  quieted  in 
the  composure  of  prayer.  These  deepening  apprehensions 
needed  for  their  source  no  changed  intention,  no  heightened 
claims,  no  more  aggressive  calls  to  repentance,  on  his  part : 
it  was  enough  that  the  same  message,  '  The  judge  is  at  hand,' 
was  to  be  flung  upon  a  new  scene,  addressed  not  to  listening 
ears  and  simple  hearts,  but  to  the  threatened  interests  of 
blind  guides  and  traffickers  in  spurious  righteousness.  Even 
in  Galilee  he  had  come  across  scribes  and  Pharisees  enough  to 
know  that  it  was  one  thing  to  speak  in  the  village  synagogue 
or  on  the  hill-side  to  a  people  "  looking  for  the  consolation  of 
Israel,"  and  quite  another  to  lift  the  prophet's  voice  in  the 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.        349 

temple  of  the  priests,  who  dreaded  all  reform,  who  wanted  no 
purification  but  such  as  they  could  administer  with  hyssop  or 
with  blood,  and  thought  less  of  mercy  than  of  sacrifice.  For 
him  therefore  it  was  a  declining  path  that  led  from  the  sunny 
uplands  of  his  home  to  the  strange  and  stately  city,  in  whose 
shadows  the  outlines  of  possibility  were  hid.  All  that  he 
knew  was  that  already  the  very  message  with  which  he  was 
charged  had  been  fatal  to  John  the  Baptist,  though  "  all  the 
people  held  him  for  a  prophet,"  and  only  "  the  Pharisees  and 
lawyers  rejected  for  themselves  the  counsel  of  God." 

(3.)  At  the  very  time  then  when  the  disciples,  fresh  from 
the  crowds  and  the  enthusiasm  that  for  above  fourteen  months 
had  followed  his  steps  in  Galilee,  were  at  last  approaching,  as 
they  thought,  the  crowning  joy  of  conveying  his  glad  tidings 
to  the  centre  of  the  nation's  life,  their  exaltation  of  spirit, 
instead  of  meeting  response  from  him,  seemed  to  sink  him 
into  a  more  pathetic  silence,  or  even  to  force  from  him  a  look 
of  compassion  or  a  word  of  remonstrance.  It  was  precisely  this 
contrast  of  moods  that  was  sure  to  elicit  from  him,  in  check 
of  their  exuberant  confidence,  prophetic  hints  of  impending 
ignominy  and  sudden  sorrow.  And  this  close  combination  is 
the  most  striking  feature  in  the  scene  of  Peter's  confession, 
and  the  most  helpful  for  its  right  interpretation. 

If  we  look  beneath  the  surface  of  that  scene,  removing  the 
films  with  which  the  touches  of  after-thought  have  painted  it 
over,  nothing  can  be  more  simple  and  true  to  character,  as 
tested  by  the  foregoing  historical  assumptions.  The  impetuous 
apostle  breaks  out,  'Thou  art  the  Messiah.'  Does  Jesus 
accept  the  part '?  His  answer  is  peremptory.  '  Silence !  to 
not  a  creature  are  j^ou  to  say  such  a  thing  again  ! '  and  ho 
instantly  adds  that  at  Jerusalem  he  expects  the  cross  and  not 
the  crown.  That  Peter  takes  this  for  a  disclaimer  and 
contradiction  of  the  pretension  just  proclaimed  on  his  l)ehalf 
is  evident  from  his  drawing  his  ]\Iaster  aside  and  privately 
rebuking  him  for  his  melancholy  prophecy,  and  pressing  hiui 
to  a  bolder  use  of  his  opportunities.  Does  Jesus  set  him 
right  by  telling  him  that  there  is  no  contradiction,  the  glory 
and  the  shame  being  blended  in  the  same  part?  On  the 
contrary,  he  goes  with  Peter  in  accepting  them  as  alternative, 


:ij 


5o  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV, 


and  treats  him  as  a  tempmcj  Satan,  counselling  the  easier 
and  the  worse  of  two  open  possibilities  :  "  Thou  mindest  not 
the  things  of  God,  but  the  things  of  men."  The  state  of 
mind  implied  in  both  the  speakers  of  this  dialogue  is  exactly 
what  v/ould  exist  if  the  one  had  heard  and  the  other  inwardly 
seen  nothing  beyond  the  tragic  issue  at  Jerusalem,  If  Peter 
had  just  been  told  not  only  of  the  cross  but  of  the  resurrection.. 
could  he  have  deprecated  the  death  and  taken  no  notice  of 
the  immortal  glory  to  which  it  was  but  the  prelude  and 
condition  ?  His  remonstrance  is  plainly  occupied  with  a 
humiliation  pure  and  simple,  and  relieved  by  no  reversal. 
And  if  Jesus  knew  and  had  just  said  that  he  should  "  lay 
down  his  life  that  he  might  take  it  again,"  if,  having  explained 
that  this  was  the  Divine  gateway  to  the  Messiahship,  he  was 
going  to  Jerusalem  on  purpose  to  pass  through  it,  how  is  it 
possible  that  he  should  meet  the  apostle's  suggestion  as  an 
alternative,  and  thrust  it  away  as  a  temptation '?  It  is  only 
in  the  deep  darkness  of  the  soul,  where  nothing  is  clear  but 
the  nearest  duty  and  its  instant  anguish,  and  the  issue  is 
shut  out  by  the  midnight  between,  that  any  Satan  can  slink 
in  with  pleas  of  ease  and  evasion.  I  mfer  therefore  from  the 
relation  described,  with  all  the  internal  marks  of  truth, 
between  the  disciple  and  the  Master,  that  Peter  felt  his 
assertion  of  the  Messiahship  to  be  repmliated,  not  accepted,  in 
the  reply  of  Jesus  ;  that  his  reply  included  no  mention  of  a 
resurrection,  but  received  this  addition  after  the  Messianic 
theory  had  been  fitted  to  the  facts  and  had  modified  the 
traditions  of  his  life ;  and  that  even  of  his  death  it  did  not 
amount  to  the  present  definite  and  detailed  prediction,  but 
only  to  such  prognostication  as  the  fate  of  John  the  Baptist 
and  the  temper  of  the  city  sects  and  hierarchy  too  clearly 
warranted.  If  he  had  really  set  himself  "  to  teach  them  that 
the  Son  of  Man  must  suffer  many  things,  and  be  rejected  by 
the  elders  and  the  chief  priests  and  the  scribes,  and  be  killed, 
and  after  three  days  rise  again  :"*  if,  a  few  days  after,  he  had 
charged  them  to  say  nothing  of  the  transfiguration  vision 
"  till  the  Son  of  Man  should  arise  from  the  dead  :  "f  if,  by  two 
special  acts  of  later  teaching,  once  while  still  in  Galilee,!  and 

*  Mark  viii.  31.  +  lb.  ix.  9.  +  lb.  ix.  .31. 


Chap.  IT.]      THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        351 

once  on  the  road  to  Jerusalem,  "he  took  the  twelve,  and 
began  to  tell  them  the  things  that  were  to  happen  unto  him, 
saying,  behold  we  go  up  to  Jerusalem,  and  the  Son  of  Man 
shall  be  delivered  unto  the  chief  priests  and  the  scribes  ;  and 
they  shall  condemn  him  to  death  and  shall  deliver  him  unto 
the  Gentiles  ;  and  they  shall  mock  him  and  shall  spit  upon 
him,  and  shall  scourge  him  and  shall  kill  him ;  and  after 
three  days  he  shall  rise  again  ;  "•*  what  can  we  possibly 
make  of  the  strange  statement  that  "  they  questioned  among 
themselves  what  the  rising  again  from  the  dead  should 
mean ;  "t  and  that  "they  understood  not  the  saying,  and 
were  afraid  to  ask  him?"t  Was  then  the  idea  of  "rising 
from  the  dead  "  foreign  to  the  Israelite  of  that  day  ?  Was  it 
not  the  very  matter  in  dispute  between  the  Pharisee  and 
Sadducee,  and,  as  such,  discussed  before  these  very  disciples  by 
Jesus  himself '?  Had  they  not  reported,  as  one  of  the  popular 
notions  about  Jesus,  that  he  was  "one  of  the  old  prophets 
risen  from  the  dead?"§  Is  there  any  obscurity  in  these 
"teachings"  of  Jesus,  that  a  child  could  mistake  them? 
Something  far  more  dim  it  must  have  been,  some  ominous 
surmise  quite  other  than  these  lists  of  clear  details,  that  left 
the  little  band  so  utterly  unprepared  for  the  events  from  the 
Passover  eve  to  the  Easter  morn,  and  scattered  them  in 
dismay.  Every  feature  of  the  tragedy,  as  it  occurred,  took 
them  by  surprise  ;  and  not  till  they  afterwards  discovered  that 
just  these  things  "  the  Christ  owjht  to  suffer  and  to  enter  into 
his  glory,"  did  they  feel  sure  that  he  must  have  known  and 
voluntarily  met  it  all,  and  have  said  enough  to  let  them  know 
it  too,  had  they  not  been  "  slow  of  heart  to  believe  what  the 
prophets  had  spoken."  |1 
If  we  suppose  Jesus  to  accept  Peter's  confession,  and,  at 

'■■-  Markx.  32-34.  t  H'- ix-  10. 

Z  lb.  ix.  32.  §  Luke  ix.  19. 

|l  The  post  evcntum  discovery  by  the  apostles  of  tlie  need  and  fore-announce- 
ment of  the  resurrection  must  have  been  notorious,  for  as  late  a  writer  as 
the  fourtli  evangelist  to  say  of  Simon  Peter  and  "the  other  disciple," 
even  after  they  had  gone  into  the  tomb  and  found  it  empty,  tliat  "  as  yet 
they  knew  not  the  Scripture,  that  lie  must  rise  again  from  the  dead." 
(xx.  9.)  If  they  must  "know  the  scripture,"  before  they  could  interj^ret  the 
empty  grave,  they  could  liardly  liave  had  tlie  key  to  it  which  Christ's  alleged 
and  distinct  prcstatement  placed  in  their  hands. 


352  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

least  from  that  moment,  to  regard  himself  as  Messiah,  what 
are  we  to  make  of  the  instant  injunction,  renewed  again  and 
again,  of  absolute  secrecy,  sometimes  unconditional, — "  to  tell 
no  man,"  at  others  provisional, — "  till  the  Son  of  Man  should 
have  risen  again  from  the  dead  "  ?  Was  then  the  Messiah- 
ship  a  private  prerogative,  which  could  be  clandestinely  held  ? 
Was  it  not  rather  the  ultimate  national  test  which  he  was 
bound  to  ojffer  for  the  judgment  of  Israel  ?  Might  not  his 
unbelieving  "  brethren  "  have  reason  for  urging  him  to  declare 
himself  on  the  public  theatre  of  his  country — "  No  man 
doeth  anything  in  secret  and  himself  seeketh  to  be  known 
openly.  If  thou  doest  these  things,  manifest  thyself  to  the 
world"?*  If  he  knew  himself  to  be  offered  to  the  faith  of 
his  people,  as  their  predicted  Prince  of  Eighteousness ;  if  he 
saw  in  their  rejection  of  him  the  ruin  which  drew  forth  his 
tears ;  if  his  own  death  was  to  be  incurred  by  the  rejected 
witness  he  had  to  bear  to  his  own  Messiahship,  how  was  it 
possible  to  tell  no  one  he  was  the  Christ  ?  Why,  it  was  the 
very  message  of  God  with  which  they  were  all  charged ;  the 
touclistone  of  Jerusalem  ;  the  hinge  of  perdition  or  salvation; 
and  to  keep  it  out  of  sight,  not  to  press  it  passionately  and 
always  upon  the  nation  at  an  hour  so  critical,  were  simple 
betrayal  of  the  divinest  trust.  The  injunction  to  conceal  the 
claim  is  inconsistent  with  his  having  made  or  sanctioned  it; 
and  the  evangelist,  we  may  be  sure,  would  never  thus  have 
provided  for  its  secrecy  had  it  not  notoriously  been  publicly 
unheard  of  at  the  time,  and  waited  to  be  posthumously  dis- 
covered. It  is  not  impossible,  indeed,  that  we  have  here  some 
remaining  trace  of  a  fatal  difference  between  the  disciples  and 
the  Master :  that,  as  soon  as  their  faces  were  turned  towards 
Jerusalem,  their  excitement  could  restrain  itself  no  more,  and 
when  the  beauty  of  Zion  rose  before  their  eye  the  sunshine  en 
it  seemed  a  prophecy  of  joy,  and  they  more  than  suspected 
him  to  be  the  hope  of  Israel,  and  the  long-sleeping  hosannas 
burst  from  their  hearts.  It  was  in  vain  now  that  he  had  for- 
bidden that  they  should  commit  him  to  it.  Had  he  been 
able,  in  doing  so,  to  tell  them,  in  some  stereotyped  formula 
lolio  he  was,  and  to  say  outright  that  he  was  Elijah  or  Jere- 

•  John  vii.  4. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         353 

uiiah,  thej^  might  perhaps  have  obeyed  him.  But  as  they 
must  have  some  story  to  tell,  they  slipped  through  the  too 
modest  prohibition,  and  told  their  own  tale ;  and,  when  out  of 
hearing,  whispered  that  he  could  be  no  other  than  the  King 
that  was  to  come.  When  by  thus  setting  up  a  dangerous 
popular  rumour  at  the  passover,  they  had  actually  brought 
their  Master  to  the  cross,  they  would  long  to  discover  that  the 
thought  on  which  they  had  acted  he  had  secretly  cherished 
himself ;  they  would  search  among  the  deep  mysterious  words 
that  lingered  in  their  memory  for  the  needful  signs  of  the 
Messianic  consciousness  ;  and  to  reconcile  them  with  the 
foreboding  and  the  fact  of  death,  they  worked  out  from  the  old 
prophets  the  theory  of  the  suffering  Messiah,  and  put  it  back 
into  his  history  as  if  it  were  his  own.  And  so  have  come 
together,  as  three  ingredients  of  one  incident,  the  prohibition 
to  say  that  he  was  Christ ;  the  acknowledgment  that  he  is 
so  ;  and  the  announcement  of  his  death  as  if  inseparable  from 
the  character.  The  combination  is  historically  impossible ; 
but  it  is  explained  by  the  retrospective  anxiety  of  tradition  to 
force  upon  him  a  theory  of  his  person  of  which  first  himself 
and  then  his  religion  has  been  the  victim. 

But  nothing  perhaps  has  left  so  strong  an  impression  of  the 
Messianic  self-announcement  of  Jesus  as  the  eschatological 
discourse  in  which  he  answers  the  apostles'  question  about  the 
"sign  of  his  coming  and  of  the  end  of  the  world."*  The 
question  arose  at  the  end  of  his  first  day's  teaching  in  the 
temple,  when  on  leaving  he  met  the  disciples'  admiration  of 
the  great  buildings  by  the  startling  prediction,  "  There  shall 
not  be  left  here  one  stone  upon  another  which  shall  not  be 
thrown  down."  Seizing  on  this  as  the  date  of  his  coming, 
they  draw  from  him,  it  is  said,  an  account  of  its  precursory 
symptoms,  with  the  addition,  in  Matthew,  of  its  issues  in  the 
judgment  of  nations  and  the  eternal  severance  of  righteous 
and  accursed. t 

Since  the  writers  of  the  Gospels  certamly  intended  to  present 

all  these  things  as  announced  by  Jesus  respecting  liimself,  the 

reader,  in  so  taking  them,  understands  the  evangelists  aright : 

but  that  in  doing  so  he  understands  Jesus  wrong,  two  slight 

*  Matt,  s-dv,  3.     Mark  xiii.  i.     Luke  xxi.  7.  t  xsv.  31-46. 

A   A 


354  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

but  significant  indications  enable  us,  without  detailed  analysis, 
to  render  more  than  probable. 

1.  Throughout  the  prophecy,  said  to  have  been  privately 
given  to  his  disciples,  of  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  of  the  world's 
last  throes,  leading  up  to  the  arrival  of  the  Son  of  Man  on  the 
clouds  of  heaven  to  part  the  sheep  from  the  goats,  and  gather 
his  elect  into  their  divine  inheritance,  and  similarly  in  all  the 
parables  about  the  kingdom  of  heaven  and  the  harvest  of 
which  the  reapers  are  the  angels,  never  once  does  an  evangelist 
venture  to  make  him  speak  of  that  drama  as  belonging  to 
himself.  The  inquiry  addressed  to  him  in  the  second  person, 
"  What  will  be  the  sign  of  thy  coming?  "  is  answered  not  in 
the  first  person,  "  After  the  tribulation  of  those  days,  ye  shall 
see  the  sign  of  my  coming  with  power  and  great  glory,"  but  in 
the  third,  the  sign  of  the  Son  of  Man,  "  and  of  his  coming  on 
the  clouds  of  heaven."  Nor,  in  the  account  of  the  judgment, 
does  he  place  himself  on  the  throne  and  declare,  "  Before  me 
shall  be  gathered  all  nations  "  ;  it  is  again  "  the  Son  of  Man  " 
who  has  his  escort  of  angels,  and  takes  the  seat  of  his  glory, 
with  the  nations  summoned  to  his  bar.  In  explaining  the 
]3arable  of  the  sower  he  does  not  say,  "It  is  I  that  sow  the 
good  seed,"  and  "  I  will  gather  out  of  my  kingdom  all  things 
that  offend,  and  them  that  do  iniquity,  and  will  cast  them  into 
the  furnace  of  fire  "  ;  these  things  are  still  given  as  predicates 
of  the  indeterminate  "  Son  of  Man."  Not  even  is  it  otherwise 
when  he  says,  "  Whosoever  shall  be  ashamed  of  me  and  of  my 
words  in  this  adulterous  and  sinful  generation,  the  So}i  of  Man 
shall  be  ashamed  of  him  when  he  cometh  in  the  glory  of  his 
Father  with  the  holy  angels."  This  also  might  have  been 
uttered  by  John  the  Baptist,  or  any  prophet  of  any  unknown 
Messiah,  for  whom  he  was  commissioned  to  sound  the  note  of 
warning  and  prepare  a  purified  people ;  '  he  that  found  it  too 
low  a  thing  for  him  to  be  seen  in  the  track  of  the  ascetic  of 
the  desert  and  his  pool  of  baptism,  would  meet  with  the  penalty 
due  to  a  divine  message  despised.'  This  constant  avoidance  by 
the  biographers  of  any  self-identification  on  the  part  of  Jesus 
with  the  eschatological  functions  of  Messiah,  explains  itself  at 
once  if  we  assume  that,  in  an  age  which  had  become  convinced 
of  his  investiture   with  these  functions,  memorialists  of  his 


Chap.  !I.]       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS. 


033 


earthly  ministry  would  not  hesitate  to  interweave  with  the 
floating  traditions  of  his  acts  and  words  apposite  fragments  of 
Jewish  apocalypse  filling  in  the  picture  and  completing  the 
drama  of  his  work.  The  matter  of  these  supplementary  ele- 
ments would  be  in  the  third  person  ;  the  historical  colloquies 
in  the  first  and  second ;  and  where  the  literary  art  of  the  com- 
piler has  not  effaced  the  difference,  the  phenomenon  which  I 
have  pointed  out  would  result, 

2,  If  Jesus,  speaking  in  his  Messianic  capacity,  fore- 
announced  to  his  disciples  all  the  particulars  of  his  Parusia, 
he  certainly  would  describe  it,  not  as  a  "  coming  of  the  Son  of 
Man,"  but  as  his  return.  Was  he  not  there,  present  with 
them  now  ?  Had  he  not  said  that  the  Son  of  Man  was  going 
to  be  betrayed  and  put  to  death,  and  to  rise  again,  and  go  forth 
into  a  "  far  country  "  ("  even  a  heavenly  ")  and  "  to  return  ?  " 
Why  then  does  the  revisiting  phenomenon  so  habitually 
introduce  itself  as  an  unprecedented  arrival  of  a  personage 
known  only  to  prophecy  ?  ^Miy  caution  the  companions  who 
know  him  so  well,  not  to  run  after  false  Christs,  whose  "  great 
signs  and  wonders  "  will  be  such  as,  if  possible,  to  deceive 
even  the  elect  ? — as  if  it  would  be  nothing,  to  them  and  to 
him,  to  meet  again  while  all  is  fulfilled.  This  peculiarity  of 
language  and  conception  (which  is  not,  however,  found  in  the 
parables,  but  only  in  the  literal  apocalyptic  statements) 
appears  to  me  a  clear  indication  of  the  unhistorical  character 
and  secondary  source  of  the  eschatological  passages  affected 
bv  it. 

The  identification  then  of  Jesus  with  the  Messianic  figure 
is  the  first  act  of  Christian  mythology,  withdrawing  man 
from  his  own  religion  to  a  religion  about  him.  What  has 
been  its  effect  ?  I  do  not  deny  that  it  may  have  been  the 
needful  vehicle  for  carrying  into  the  mind  and  heart  of  the 
early  converts  influences  too  spiritual  to  live  at  first  without 
it.  Nor  do  I  forget  that  it  has  saved  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
for  religious  use  in  the  Christian  Church  instead  of  leaving 
them  no  home  but  the  Jewish  svnagogue.  But  the  moment 
the  conception  is  seen  to  be  false  and  um-eal,  this  secondary 
plea  disappears,  and  the  whole  system  of  images  and  terms 
that  hang  around  the  primary  fiction  and  have  no  life  besides, 


A   A    2 


356  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

require  revision.  It  does  not  escape  me  how  wide  is  the  sweep 
of  this  rule,  and  how  the  very  scenery  of  the  traditional  dramp^ 
of  faith,  the  pictures  with  which  Art  and  Poetry  have  rendered 
the  invisible  world  beautiful  and  terrible,  nay,  much  of  the 
symbolism  consecrated  by  the  hymns  and  prayers  of  centuries, 
must  shrivel  at  its  touch,  roll  up  and  pass  away  ;  only,  how- 
ever, to  leave  us  alone  with  God  in  a  universe  imperishable. 
If  its  magic  should  dissolve  the  theatre  in  which  we  sit,  and 
the  stage  lights  go  out,  we  should  but  find  ourselves  beneath 
the  stars.  Must  we  not  own  that,  purely  in  his  character  of 
Messiah  coming  shortly  with  his  saints  to  reign,  was  he  cahed 
hord ;  or  only  as  presiding  at  the  great  assize  which  was  to 
open  his  reign,  was  he  called  Judge  ;  and  because  in  that  hour 
his  verdict  would  reserve  from  the  sentence  which  swept  the 
rest  away  all  those  who  knew  him  and  bore  his  name,  he  was 
called  their  Saviour  ?  And  can  we  pretend  that,  when  that 
advent-scene  has  been  turned  into  a  dream,  its  language  can 
remain  a  sincere  reality  ?  For  those  who,  instead  of  letting 
the  Messianic  vision  break  up  as  an  Israelitish  illusion,  per- 
petuate it  as  a  Christian  apocalypse ;  for  those  who  believe 
that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  will  send  forth  his  angels  and  gather 
his  elect,  and  set  up  his  throne  and  divide  the  affrighted  world 
with  a  "  Come,  ye  blessed,"  and  a  "  Depart,  ye  cursed,"  these 
titles  of  sovereignty,  of  judicial  award,  of  rescue  from  perdi- 
tion, have  still  an  exact  and  natural  meaning,  as  the  symbols 
of  a  definite  though  monstrous  mythology.  But,  when  once 
our  relation  to  him  has  become  simply  spiritual, — a  relation 
of  personal  reverence  and  historical  recognition, — a  looking- 
up  to  him  as  the  supreme  type  of  moral  communion  between 
man  and  God, — must  we  not  own  that  these  terms  not  only 
cease  to  represent  any  reality,  but  become  either  empty  or 
misleading  as  imagery?  Between  soul  and  soul,  even  the 
greatest  and  the  least,  there  can  be,  in  the  things  of  righteous- 
ness and  love,  no  lordship  and  servitude,  but  the  sublime 
sympathy  of  a  joint  worship  on  the  several  steps  of  a  never- 
ending  ascent.  The  language  which  marks  external  differences 
of  rank  and  function  can  no  more  enter  into  the  fellowship  of 
the  spirit,  than  robes  of  office  and  patents  of  nobility  can  go 
to  heaven :  the  august  presence  of  the  Divine  reality  shames 


Chap.  II.l       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON   OF  JESUS.         357 

these  things  away.  "vYith  the  throne  and  the  glory,  and  the 
chariot  of  clouds,  and  the  retinue  of  saints  in  the  air  and  the 
trumpet  of  the  herald  and  the  voice  of  the  archangel,  must 
disappear  the  lordship  too ;  and  God  alone,  as  Euler  of 
Nature,  as  well  as  Light  of  Souls,  and  so,  disposing  of  us 
where  we  have  no  disposal  of  ourselves,  must  be  owned  as 
the  Sovereign  whom  we  unconditionally  serve.  To  no  other 
being  (the  political  organism  aj^art)  do  we  stand  under  this 
two-fold  relation, — of  outward  dependence  in  the  sphere  of 
physical  power,  and  of  inward  communion  in  the  sphere  of 
spiritual  good  :  and  nowhere  else  can  the  double  attitude  and 
the  mixed  language  befit  us,  of  natural  surrender  and  of  moral 
aspiration.  There  alone  the  theocratic  terms  remain  at  home, 
and  keep  a  meaning  pure  and  firm.  If  j'ou  strain  them  thence, 
and  carry  them  over  to  the  realm  of  conscience  and  affections, 
you  confuse  the  region  whence  you  take  them,  and  vulgarize 
that  to  which  3^ou  apply  them.  For  mere  figurative  speech 
indeed,  which  flings  a  transitory  light  and  passes  on,  which 
settles  into  no  formula  but  moves  with  flitting  gleams,  the  old 
Hebrew  and  apostolic  types  of  conception  remain  as  open  and 
as  rich  as  any  other  store  :  and  of  the  "  promised  land,"  the 
"heavenly  Jerusalem,"  the  "  Kingdom  of  heaven,"  the  "  City 
of  our  God,"  the  "  holy  place  behind  the  veil,"  we  shall  never 
cease  to  speak,  so  long  as  there  is  a  divine  love  and  hope  in 
the  human  heart,  and  a  faith  m  everlasting  Eigliteousness. 
But  it  is  precisely  where  there  is  no  flash  of  poetry  and  no 
glow  of  fervour,  in  the  most  literal  and  well-weighed  speech, 
in  professions  of  belief,  in  definitions  of  doctrine,  in  forms  of 
prayer,  that  the  Messianic  language  has  settled  with  the  most 
tenacious  hold  ;  and,  unless  it  be  loosened  thence,  our  religion 
will  perish  in  its  grasp.  Are  we  quitting  an  ancient  sanctity 
in  doing  so  ?  it  is  to  enter  on  a  truer  and  a  higher.  It  is 
time  to  ascend  to  a  more  enduring  order  of  spiritual  relations, 
binding  us  to  a  larger  world  of  sympathy,  while  infinitely 
deepening  the  long  familiar  ties.  Let  us  take  courage  to  be 
true,  and  make  no  reserves  in  our  acceptance  of  the  inward 
promptings  of  our  ever-living  Guide. 


358  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 


§  2.  As  Bisen  from  the  Dead. 

The  Christian  Kehgion,  at  its  fountain-head,  and  in  its 
imperishable  essence,  is  the  rehgion  of  Jesus.  Not  that  it 
includes  tlie  icliole  even  of  Ms  thought  about  divine  and  human 
things  :  for  he  too,  born  in  time  and  place,  had  his  heritage 
from  the  past  as  well  as  his  power  over  the  future  ;  and  the 
new  life  in  him  wrought  amid  old  materials  of  habit  and  idea, 
and  struck  out  its  light  in  dealing  with  many  a  problem  tra- 
ditional then  and  obsolete  now.  From  the  mere  scenery  thus 
given  for  his  agency  we  must  still  retire  within,  till  we  reach 
its  hidden  springs  in  his  own  individuality  ;  and  there  at  last, 
in  the  characteristics  of  his  spirit,  in  its  attitude  towards  the 
Heavenly  Father  and  the  earthly  brother,  in  the  secret  faiths 
which  shaped  these  tender  and  expressive  lines,  we  look  upon 
the  pure  source  itself,  the  crystal  waters  as  they  lie  among  the 
hills  in  their  basin  of  living  rock.  The  more  the  type  of  mind 
thus  coming  into  view  approaches  the  unique,  the  more  diffi- 
cult it  is  to  define  its  lineaments  in  analytic  words.  An 
impersonated  religion  can  have  no  equivalent  in  propositions. 
They  may  enumerate  some  indispensable  conditions  ;  but  the 
inner  unity,  the  tempering  power,  the  delicate  harmonies, 
which  blend  and  proportion  them,  evade  the  resources  of 
language.  Every  enumeration  must  be  false  which  gives  in 
succession  elements  which  can  onty  live  together.  But,  if  we 
must  try  to  state  in  words  the  religion  embodied  in  the  person 
of  the  Christian  Founder,  we  may  perhaps  resolve  it  into  an 
intimate  sense  of  filial,  spiritual,  responsible  relation  to  a  God 
of  righteousness  and  love  ;  an  unreserved  recognition  of  moral 
fraternity  among  men  ;  and  a  reverent  estimate  of  humanity, 
compelling  the  faith  that  "  the  dead  live."  This  is  the  com- 
bination of  which  his  person  is  the  living  expression ;  and  he 
in  whom  they  reappear  is  at  one  with  Christianity ;  con- 
sciously, if  recognizing  their  representation  in  him ;  uncon- 
sciously, if  repeating  them  apart  from  him. 

From  this  primar}^  Pieligion  of  Christ,  which  simply  speaks 
out  the  native  trusts  and  unspoiled  reverence  of  the  human 
soul,  which  lies  hid  in  all  its  justice,  breathes  in  its  pity  and 


Chap.  II.  I       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.         359 

its  prayer,  and  inwardly  hears  a  pathetic  poetry  as  the  under- 
tone of  life,  transfer  yourself  suddenly  to  the  Christendom  of 
today  :  watch  the  worship ;  listen  to  the  creeds  ;  mark  the 
picture  of  the  universe  and  the  theory  of  existence  that  per- 
vade it, — the  assumption  of  ruin,  sin  and  hell  as  the  universal 
ground  of  all,  the  eager  seizure  of  an  exceptional  escape  into  a 
select  and  scanty  heaven  :  see  how  he  who  threw  open  the 
living  communion  between  the  Divine  and  human  spirit  is  set 
to  stop  the  way  and  insist  that  no  suppliant  cry  shall  pass 
except  through  him ;  and  what  can  be  more  astounding  than 
the  contrast  between  that  pure  spring  in  the  uplands  of  history 
and  this  dismal  stream  of  horrors  ?  Who  could  imagine  that 
the  one  has  flowed  from  the  other  ?  that  the  candle-and- 
posture  question  comes  from  that  scene  at  table  in  the  upper 
chamber  at  Jerusalem  ?  that  he  whom  litanies  and  hymns 
•without  number  implore  today,  is  the  same  whom  we  see  on 
the  mountain  all  night  in  prayer,  and  prostrate  and  broken  in 
Gethsemane  ?  It  would  be  inexplicable,  were  it  not  that  all 
ideal  truth  must  apparently  build  a  mythology  around  it,  in 
order  to  realize  its  power ;  and  then,  hiding  itself  among  the 
current  ideas  and  inherited  affections  of  men,  disappears  from 
the  foreground,  and  is  replaced  by  secondary  opinions  about 
it, — whence  it  comes,  and  whither  it  would  go.  And  so  it  has 
happened  that  for  the  religion  of  Christ  has  been  substituted, 
all  through  the  ages,  a  theory  about  him, — what  he  was  in 
nature,  what  he  did  by  coming  into  the  world,  what  he  left 
behind  when  he  quitted  it.  These  are  the  matters  of  which 
chiefly  confessions  and  churches  speak ;  and,  by  doing  so,  they 
make  him  into  the  object,  instead  of  the  vehicle  and  source  of 
their  religion ;  they  change  him  from  the  "author,"  because 
supreme  example,  into  the  end,  of  faith  ;  and  thus  turn  him, 
whose  very  function  it  was  to  leave  us  alone  with  God,  into 
the  idol  and  the  incense  which  interpose  to  hide  him.  If  his 
work  is  not  to  be  utterly  frustrated  in  the  world,  the  whole  of 
this  mythology  must  be  taken  down  as  it  was  built  up  :  if  once 
it  was  needed  to  conciliate  the  weakness  of  mankhid,  it  now 
alienates  their  strength :  if  to  Jew  or  Greek  it  made  some 
elements  of  his  religion  credible,  with  us  it  runs  the  risk  of 
rendering  it  all  incredible  :  if  ever  it  helped  to  give  to  Chris- 


36o  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

tianity  the  lead  of  human  intelligence,  to  secure  for  it 
mastership  in  the  schools,  authority  in  the  court,  and  the 
front  rank  in  the  advance  of  civilization,  it  now  reverses  these 
effects,  irritating  and  harassing  the  pioneers  of  knowledge, 
compelling  reformers  to  disregard  or  defy  it,  and  leaving 
theological  thought  upon  so  low  a  plane  that  minds  of  a  high 
level  must  sink  to  touch  it,  and  great  statesmen  and  grave 
judges  and  refined  scholars  are  no  sooner  in  contact  with  it 
and  holding  forth  upon  it,  than  all  robustness  seems  to  desert 
their  intellect,  and  they  drift  into  pitiable  weakness. 

It  would  be  much  easier  to  untwine  the  mythological  attri- 
butes from  the  person  of  Jesus,  were  it  not  that  the  process  of 
investing  him  with  them  had  begun  long  before  our  New 
Testament  books  assumed  their  form.  No  one  takes  it  amiss 
if  we  ascribe  a  fancy  to  Barnabas  or  Apollos,  a  superstition  to 
Papias,  a  theory  to  Justin  Martyr,  a  blunder  to  Irenseus.  But 
the  moment  we  stand  among  the  canonical  writings,  it  is 
thought  shocking  to  say,  "  This  was  Paul's  speculation ;" 
"  That  was  Matthew's  mistake ;"  "  Here  the  fourth  gospel 
is  at  variance  with  the  rest ;"  and  "  There  the  Galatians  and 
Acts  cannot  both  be  true  : "  as  if  the  writers  were  lifted 
above  opinions  and  were  not  allowed  to  think.  Yet,  except 
that  it  contains  (not  however  without  exception)  an  earlier 
Cliristian  literature,  and  in  the  case  of  the  Pauline  letters 
productions  of  the  first  age  itself,  the  New  Testament  does 
not  differ,  in  the  conditions  of  its  origin,  from  the  mass  of 
writings  whence  it  was  selected  ;  and  its  living  interest,  as 
best  reporter  of  facts  and  traditions  of  the  first  century  from 
the  baptism  of  Jesus,  is  lost  m  a  haze  of  illusory  uniformity, 
unless  we  may  trace  through  it  the  evident  growth  of  doctrine 
from  the  baldest  Jewish  Chiliasm  to  the  confines  of  a  Trini- 
tarian theology  ;  a  growth  conspicuous  even  in  the  single 
mind  of  Paul  himself,  and  vastly  broader  when  he  is  com-* 
pared  with  the  preceding  stage  in  the  second  gospel,  and  the 
succeeding  in  the  last. 

The  growth  of  the  Christian  mythology  which  has  taken 
the  place  of  the  Christian  religion  was  continuous  through  six 
centuries,  and  received,  at  intervals,  some  important  additions 
afterwards.      Within  the  limits  of  the  New   Testament,  we 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        361 

can  follow  it  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half ;  and  we  find 
there  the  vestiges  of  three  successive  theories  respecting  the 
person  of  Jesus.     He  was  construed  into  (1.)  the  Jewish  ideal, 
or  Messiah  ;   ('2.)  the  Human  ideal,  or  second  and  spiritual 
Adam  ;  (3.)  a  divine  Incarnation,  whose  celestial  glory  gleamed 
through  the  disguise  of  his  earthly  ministry.     The  personal 
attendants  on  Jesus  worked  out  the  first ;  the  apostle  of  the 
Gentiles,  the  second;  the  school  whence  the  fourth  gospel 
proceeded,  the  third.     They  were  not  mere  mterpretations  of 
his  historical  mission   and  past  life  in  Palestine.     They  all 
demanded  room  for  him  beyond  the  term  between  the  birth 
and  the  sepulchre  ;  one  of   them  at  least  required  his  pre- 
existence  ;  and  all,  his  post-existence.       If  he  were  Messiah, 
he   had   yet    his   work    on    earth    to   do ;    if    he   were  the 
second  Adam,  the    ideal  of   humanity,  he   was  the  head  of 
an  immortal  race,  and  must  be  the    first-fruits  himself;   if 
he   were   the    divine  Logos  in  the  form  of  Man,  he    must 
return  whence  he  came,  and  reassume  his  place  with  God. 

Of  these  three  theories,  the  first  alone  was  already  formed 
during  the  later  days  of  his  ministry.  It  possessed  the 
minds  of  his  companions  from  Galilee  to  Judoea,  without  (as 
I  have  endeavoured  to  show)  any  sanction  or  adoption  by 
him.  It  kindled  them  with  excitement  as  tliG  towers  of 
Jerusalem  came  in  sight :  it  broke  out  in  Hosannas  as  the 
procession  descended  to  the  gates :  it  was  ever  present  in  their 
minds  as  he  taught  in  the  temple,  and  gathered  the  people, 
and  shamed  the  ofiicers  away  :  it  suggested  the  conversations 
of  the  evening  walk  across  the  hill  to  Bethany :  it  came  to  a 
crisis  on  the  last  night,  when  Judas  at  all  events  would  wait 
no  more,  but  would  drive  him  from  his  ideal  pieties  to  assert 
his  real  character  and  assume  his  place.  They  all  probably 
shared  the  feeling  of  impatience  at  delay  which  in  the 
betrayer  had  taken  its  extreme  and  fatal  expression:  they 
had  all  more  or  less  committed  themselves  to  the  Messianic 
claim  for  their  Master,  and  contributed  by  it  to  bring  him  to 
the  cross.  Struck  down  with  dismay  at  the  issue  of  their 
own  dream,  tossed  between  compunctions  which  they  dare 
not  meet  and  a  love  for  him  which  they  would  not  let  go  for 
ever,    "  scattered   abroad   like    sheep   when  the  shepherd  is 


362  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

smitten,"*  and  flung  back  into  Galilee,  to  hide  from  danger, 
brood  in  solitude,  or  whisper  their  grief  and  wonder  in  twos 
and  threes,  could  they  discern  no  light  through  all.  that 
gloom  ?  INIust  they  say  that  the  divinest  vision  of  their  life 
was  an  illusion?  that  the  priests  were  right,  and  Calvary 
was  just  ?  No,  it  was  impossible ;  if  he  was  not  what  they 
had  thought,  he  was  something  higher,  and  not  lower: 
if  he  had  refused  their  way,  it  was  because  it  was  not 
pure  enough  for  him,  and  through  sorrow  and  death  he 
could  find  a  better.  Had  they  not  read  the  Prophets  with 
eyes  only  half  awake  and  been  dazzled  by  brilliant  colours  of 
Messiah's  glory?  '  For  see  here, — is  he  not  "  led  as  a  lamb 
to  the  slaughter  ?  "  seemingly  "  smitten  of  God  and  afflicted  ?" 
"despised  and  rejected  of  men  ?  "  And  yet,  "because  he 
had  poured  out  his  spirit  unto  death,"  is  it  not  said  that  he 
shall  still  "prolong  his  days"  and  "divide  the  spoil  with 
the  strong,"  and  that  "  the  design  of  the  Lord  shall  prosper  in 
his  hand?"  \  Is  it  not  this  that  we  have  unwittingly  ful- 
filled,-— the  humiliation  of  Messiah  which  must  go  before  his 
glory  ? — of  which  glory  his  father  David  spake  for  him  in 
the  Spirit,  when  he  said,  "Thou  wilt  not  leave  my  soul  in 
Hades  ;  and,  Thou  wilt  not  suffer  thy  holy  one  to  see  corrup- 
tion ;  Thou  wilt  show  me  the  path  of  life."  I  Nor  would  such 
deductions  from  Scripture  have  been  without  some  support 
from  the  disciples'  own  memory  of  the  recent  weeks.  Could 
they  forget  the  pathetic  shadow  that  seemed  to  fall  upon 
their  Master's  face,  as  soon  as  it  was  set  towards  Jerusalem  ? 
— or  the  hints  of  suflering  and  wrong  with  which  he  had 
met  Peter's  exulting  zeal  ?  Was  not  his  whole  mood,  from 
that  moment,  a  preparation  for  self-sacrifice  rather  than  for 
triumph  ?  Was  he  then  perhaps  first  learning  the  will  of  the 
Father  concerning  him,  that  not  on  this  side  of  death  was  he, 
any  more  than  the  Baptist,  to  see  the  Kingdom  which  he  had 
to  announce?  It  was  called  the  "kingdom  of  heaven:" 
what  wonder  then  that  from  heaven  it  should  come,  and  that 
to  heaven  he  should  go  to  bring  it  ?  For  there  surely,  and 
not  in  Hades,  must  he  be, — this  Son  of  God  more  beloved 

*  :Mark  xiv.  27.  f  Isaiah  liii.  3-12. 

i  Psalm  xvi.  10,  11.     Acts  ii.  27,  xiii.  35-37. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.         363 

than  Moses,  more  august  than  EHjah  :  and  as  they,  his  two 
witnesses  and  fore-runners,  chiefs  of  Israel's  Law  and  Israel's 
prophets,  were  already  there  among  the  angels,  where  else 
should  he  be  on  whom  they  are  both  to  attend  at  his  coming  ? 
'  Nay,  what  is  it  that  I  half  remember,'  might  Peter  say  to 
James  and  John,  '  of  that  night  upon  the  mount,  made  up 
of  dream  and  waking,  of  cloud  and  light,  when  we  overheard 
the  prayer  go  forth  from  the  dai'kness  of  his  soul  and  beheld 
it  return  in  a  divine  glory  on  the  "  fashion  of  his  counte- 
nance," and  words  escaped  him  as  if  communing  with  the 
earlier  messengers  of  God?  Was  it  perhaps  in  that  very 
hour  that  he  learned  that  the  will  of  God  was  l)y  the  vray 
of  the  cross  ?  Who  could  be  so  fitly  sent  to  tell  him,  as 
just  those  two  who  were  to  "go  before"  and  "prepare  the 
way  for  him  "  to  tread  ?  Our  eyes  "  were  heavy  with  sleep  ;" 
I  was  beside  myself  with  joy  and  fear,  and  "  knew  not  what  I 
said  ;  "  but  now  there  comes  from  that  memory  the  one  clear 
voice,  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  my  chosen  ;  hear  ye  him."  ' 

If  the  Messianic  doctrine  of  the  time  did  not  directly  invent, 
it  would  at  least  admit,  such  trains  of  thought  as  these ;  for, 
like  all  ideal  pictures,  it  had  but  wavering  outlines  and  colours 
that  changed  with  the  glow  or  chill  from  the  breath  of  circum- 
stances. The  enthusiasm  of  trust  and  love,  beaten  back  by 
the  tragedy  of  Calvary,  was  sure  to  reassert  its  elasticity ; 
nor  could  anything  sooner  bring  the  reaction  than  the  return 
to  Galilee,  where  every  familiar  scene  recalled  his  image  and 
his  voice,  and  the  villagers  and  children  who  gathered  round 
to  hear  the  storv  to  its  end,  bore  witness  to  him  bv  their 
dismay  and  tears.  It  was  impossible  to  tell  the  tale  without 
the  intensest  assurance  that  never  had  he  been  truer  and 
dearer  to  God  than  in  those  last  days,  which  were  but  as  an 
offering  himself  up  to  a  diviner  will,  and  a  passing  through 
into  more  heavenly  life  ;  so  that  there  was  something  in  them 
which  neutralized  the  shock  of  the  Cross  itself.  To  this  state 
of  mind  it  would  cease  to  be  a  thing  incredible  that  Messiah 
should  be  "  cut  off  from  the  land  of  the  li\-iug  :  "'  it  was  only 
that  "  the  heaven  should  receive  him  until  the  time  for  the 
restoration  of  all  things." 

Thus  far  then,  that  is,  to  tlie  belief  that  Jesus,  the  crucified, 


•364  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

Still  lives,  and  only  waits  the  Father's  time  to  fulfil  the  pro- 
mises, an  intelligible  process  might  well  bring  the  disciples ; 
and  fliis  is  the  faith,  in  his  resurrection.     The  conviction  de- 
pended, in  its  two  parts,  on  different  som'ces  :  that  the  cross, 
instead  of  forfeiting,  realized  the  Messianic  character,  rests, 
for  its  evidence,   on  the  prophetic  writings  ;  that  Jesus,  on 
yielding  up  his  earthly  life,  passed,  not,  like  other  men,  into 
the  storehouse  of  souls  in  the  underworld,  but,  like  the  two  or 
three   great   spirits   that  had  "  walked  with  God,"  into  the 
abodes   of  the  immortals,  where  even  they  that  have  been 
human  are  "as  the  angels  of  heaven,"  —  this  faith  w^as  only 
what  was   already  held  by  contemporary  Israel    respecting 
their  own  Lawgiver,  and  was  not  conditional  on  any  supposed 
resuscitation  of  the  earthly  corpse  ;  as  may  be  seen  from  a 
curious  fragment  of  a  Jewish  Apocalypse,  called  the'AvaX))T//tc 
Miovaiwq,  the  Assumption  of  Moses,  and  quoted  in  the  letter  of 
Jude.*    When  Moses  ascended  Pisgah  to  look  down  on  the 
promised  land,  and  die,  it  is  said,  the   Lord   buried   him.f 
But  his  successor,  Joshua,  the  "Assumption  "  tells  us,  being 
carried  in  vision  to  the  spot  at  the  moment  of  decease,  beheld 
a  double  Moses,  one  dropped  into  the  grave,   as  belonging  to 
the   earth,    the   other  mingling  with  the  angels.  +     This  ex- 
ceptional  assignment   to   the   ranks   of  the   blessed   is    the 
instinctive  award  of  reverence  and  gratitude  to  the  diviner 
•lights  of  the  world  ;  and  in  the  case  of  the  disciples  attests  the 
transcendent  power  of  the  personality  of  him  to  whom  their 
very  souls  had  clung,  and  from  whom  neither  wrongs  from 
men    nor   the   fate   of  death   could   part    them.     Whatever 
momentar}'  cry  the  parting  anguish  might  wring  from  his  lips 
or  theirs,  they  now  knew  him  to  be  taken  away,  not  as  the 
forsaken,  but  as  the  beloved  of  God,  elected  to  be  the  Prince 
of  Life  to  all  who  grew  like  him  by  seeing  him  as  he  is. 
This  dependence  of  their  faith  in  immortality  on  the  irresistible 
suasion  of  a  single  supreme  and  winning  personality  explains 
the  order  of  their   inference,    from    the   one   to   the   many, 
"because  he  lives,  we  shall  live  also;"  whereas  ice  should 

*  Verse  9.  f  Deut.  xxxiv.  6. 

J  xiv.    &]).  Hilgenfcld,  Messias  Judseorum,  p.  459.     Drummond's  Jewish 
Messiah,  p.  77. 


Chap.  11. 1       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         365 

more  naturally  say,  "  because  man  is  immortal,  he  is  in 
heaven,  a  chief  among  souls,"  seeming  to  reason  from  the 
many  to  the  one.  Yet  I  know  not  whether,  so  far  as  there  is 
difference,  theirs  be  not  deeper  truth.  For  surely  with  all  of 
us  it  holds  good,  that  only  through  the  presence  of  spirits 
akin  to  his,  does  any  diviner  world  of  human  possibility,  any 
inward  demand  on  life  eternal,  open  upon  us  and  plead  in  our 
prayers.  All  our  higher  faith  enters  as  we  stand  before  those 
saintly  and  commanding  natures  to  which  perishable  attributes 
refuse  to  cleave,  and  fall  off,  like  the  moss  and  mould  from  the 
finest  marble,  leaving  the  form  clear  against  the  stainless  sky. 
As  their  silent  appeal  finds  the  spiritual  deeps  within  us,  it  is 
from  them  that  we  draw  the  faith  in  immortality,  and  learn  to 
deem  nothing  too  august  for  a  soul  of  such  high  vocation. 
Thus  far  we  move  on  the  same  line  with  the  first  disciples. 
If  at  this  point  we  diverge,  it  is  that  they  could  not  j-et 
assume,  as  we  now  do,  that  all  human  souls  have  the  same 
high  vocation,  but  treated  it  as  a  particular  calling,  condi- 
tional on  something  else  than  the  common  humanity.  They 
had  not  yet  fully  emerged  from  the  religion  of  an  "  elect 
people "  into  the  universalism  of  Christianity,  though  the 
key  to  it  had  been  given  by  Jesus  himself  in  his  great 
sajdng  that  "All  live  unto  God."  Nobly  and  beneficently 
has  the  conviction  worked,  that  God  would  have  "  all  men 
to  be  saved,"'  and  has  endowed  all  alike  with  the  conditions 
of  probation  and  the  potentiality  of  holiness.  It  has  softened 
the  antipathies  of  race,  and  shamed  the  excesses  of  power ; 
has  precipitated  the  higher  consciousness  of  the  world  in 
labours  of  missionary  mercy  upon  the  lower  ;  has  length- 
ened the  arm  and  multiplied  the  appliances  of  compassion ; 
and  has  been  the  palladium,  guarding  every  threatened 
sanctuary  of  hope.  Unavoida])ly,  however,  what  is  gained  in 
diffusion  is  more  or  less  lost  in  intensity ;  and  the  ideal 
which  is  practically  believable  for  all  men,  and  is  therefore 
measured  liy  the  standard  of  the  lowest,  cannot  inspire  the 
devotion  and  love  with  which  Mary  sat  at  Jesus'  feet,  and 
Peter  exclaimed,  "  Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go '?  Thou  hast 
the  words  of  eternal  life."  We  may  well  admit  then  that 
there    was    a    concentrated   power   in    the   disciples'    direct 


365  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

Ijersonal  limitation  of  the  immortal  life  to  the  case  before 
them.  They  had  simply  gained  the  assurance  that  on 
Calvary  Jesus  had  finished  nothing  but  his  sorrows,  and  had 
passed  to  a  divine  retreat  till  the  hour  should  strike  for  him 
to  open  the  kingdom  of  God  upon  the  earth ;  his  heavenly 
life,  in  its  human  relations,  remaining  solitary  and  excep- 
tional ;  in  the  presence,  no  doubt,  of  angels  and  of  God  ;  but 
with  no  human  society,  except  the  two  or  three  favoured 
prophets  who  had  mysteriously  vanished  from  their  "  walk 
with  God,"  or  in  the  clouds  of  Nebo,  or  on  the  chariot  of  fire. 

Supported  at  least,  but  not  induced  by  influences  like  these, 
the  belief  that  their  Master  lived  in  a  higher  world  was 
certainly  intensely  held  by  his  personal  disciples,  and  in  the 
course  of  a  few  years  (viz.,  four)  it  started  up  afresh,  from 
some  marvellous  cause,  \\\  a  mind  of  very  different  order, — the 
very  enemy  in  whom  it  might  least  be  expected  to  appear.  It 
is  impossible  to  doubt  that  all  alike, — the  new  convert  and  the 
prior  apostles, — flung  themselves  with  unreserved  confidence 
on  the  faith  that  Jesus  was  in  heaven,  to  die  no  more,  and 
accepted  it  as  their  mission  to  spread  this  faith  among  their 
nation,  and  beyond. 

In  carrying  out  this  mission,  they  affirmed  something  more 
than  their  faith  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ :  they  declared 
that  they  had  seen  the  risen  Christ ;  and  had  they  not  been 
able  to  do  so,  they  could  hardly  have  conveyed  to  others  the 
profound  assurance  of  his  heavenly  life  which,  in  their  own 
minds,  so  largely  depended  on  the  impressions  of  their 
personal  experience.  It  is  no  wonder  then,  that,  in  the 
traditional  accounts  of  their  life-work,  and  in  the  autobio- 
graphical passages  of  the  Pauline  letters,  Christophanies  play 
an  important  part,  and  come  to  the  front  as  the  credentials  of 
their  gospel.  In  fixing  attention  on  these,  the  chief  point  to 
be  determined  must  be,  whether  they  were  the  cause  or  the 
effect  of  the  faith  in  the  immortal  Christ.  In  order  to  ap- 
proach this  question  to  the  best  advantage,  we  must  take  up  the 
documentary  testimonies  in  the  order  of  their  production,  and 
not  in  the  historical  order  of  appearances  which  they  relate. 

Under  the  hand  of  one  writer   alone,   the  Apostle   of  the 
Gentiles,  have  we  any  contemporary  report  of  the  Christo- 


Chap.  1 1.  J       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         367 

phanies  ;  of  those  which  he  enumerates,  one  only,  and  that 
the  last,  occurred  in  his  own  experience ;  and  his  earliest 
mention  of  it  dates  nineteen  years  after  its  occurrence.  This 
single  personal  testimony  naturally  becomes,  in  our  endeavours 
to  penetrate  to  the  ultimate  historical  truth,  the  clew  to  the 
rest ;  and  the  terms  in  which  it  is  given  have  an  important 
significance  in  what  they  express,  and  what  they  exclude. 
The  apostle,  referring  to  his  conversion,  saj^s,  at  a  pre- 
determined time,  it  "was  the  good  pleasure  of  God  h)  reveal 
]iis  Son  in  me'' ;  and,  as  to  the  gospel  thus  given,  "It  is  not 
after  man  ;  for  neither  did  I  receive  it  from  man,  nor  was  I 
taught  it,  but  it  came  to  me  through  revelation  of  Jesus 
Christ."*  The  two  facts  here  asserted,  that  for  the  contents 
of  his  gospel  he  wanted  and  received  no  human  testimony,  and 
that  the  revealing  of  Christ  to  him  was  internal,  are  in 
harmony  only  with  a  process  of  ideal  change  occurring  in  his 
spiritual  history,  and  are  announced  in  terms  wholly  inappli- 
cable to  the  flash  of  physical  miracle  upon  the  senses,  or  the 
visit  of  an  unknown  person  walking  and  talking  in  the  space 
around.  The  language  would  have  its  natural  meaning 
completely  satisfied  by  a  sudden  discovery  of  thought,  throw- 
ing a  new  light  upon  some  painful  problem,  or  setting  free 
from  pressure  a  struggling  will ;  and  could  be  appropriated  by 
many  of  the  impassioned  souls  that  have  had  a  story  to  tell  of 
religious  conversion.  True  it  is,  that  Paul  comes  nearer  to 
the  language  of  perception,  when  he  says,  "Ami  not  free? 
Am  I  not  an  apostle  ?  Have  I  not  seen  Jesus  our  Lord?"  + 
In  all  language,  however,  it  is  usual  to  extend  the  terms  of 
visual  perception  to  acts  of  mental  apprehension  ;  and  here 
there  is  a  particular  reason  for  using  the  same  word  to  cover 
Ijoth  ;  for  the  writer's  argument  is,  that  the  apostleship  of  the 
twelve,  which  rests  upon  the  former,  is  no  better  than  his 
own,  which  rests  upon  the  latter  :  the  qualifying  knowledge  in 
either  case  is  adequate,  as  is  shown  in  the  resulting  fruits. 

But  Paul's  testimony  does  not  stop  short  with  the 
"revelation  of  Jesus  Christ"  at  his  own  conversion.  He  also 
ranges  this  in  line  with  the  whole  series  of  Christophanies 
known  to  the  first  Christians :  he  tells  the   Corinthians,   "  I 

*  Gal.  i.  12-16.  t  1  Cor.  i.K.  1. 


368  SEVERANCE   OF    UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

delivered  unto  you  first  of  all  that  which  I  also  received,  how 
that  Christ  died  for  our  sins  according  to  the  Scriptures,  and 
was  buried  ;  and  that  he  has  been  raised  on  the  third  day  accord- 
ing to  the  scriptures ;  and  that  he  appeared  to  Cephas  ;  then 
to  the  twelve  ;  then  he  appeared  to  above  five  hundred  brethren 
at  once,  of  whom  the  greater  part  remain  until  now,  but  some 
are  fallen  asleep  :  then  he  appeared  to  James  ;  then  to  all  the 
apostles  ;  and  last  of  all,  as  unto  one  born  out  of  due  time,  he 
appeared  to  me  also."*  The  whole  of  these  facts  he  "■received; " 
but  from  two  different  sources  which  he  is  careful  to  dis- 
tinguish ;  the  first  half,  including  the  resurrection  on  the 
third  day,  were  ''  accredited  by  the  scriptures  ;  "  the  second 
half,  consisting  of  the  Christophanies,  were  personal 
experiences  related  to  him  by  others,  or  felt  in  himself. 
These  are  presented  in  the  list  as  if  they  were  perfectly 
homogeneous,  his  own  case  being  distinguished  by  nothing 
except  its  occurrence  after  an  interval  and  at  the  end. 
Beyond  this  relative  position,  no  date  is  given  for  any  of  them  ; 
nor  is  any  locality  assigned  ;  provided  the  order  were  not 
disturbed,  there  is  no  one  of  them  that  might  not  be  on  the 
third  day  or  on  the  three-hundredth, — in  Jerusalem, — at 
Bethany,  or  on  the  hills  of  Galilee.  This  inclusion  of  all 
under  the  same  category  could  hardly  be,  if  the  writer  were 
conscious  that  his  own  experience,  as  inward  and  spiritual,  was 
strongly  contrasted  with  that  of  the  others,  as  a  return  of  the 
earthly  body  from  the  grave,  to  walk  upon  the  roads,  and 
partake  of  meals,  and  be  handled  by  testing  fingers,  and 
recognized  by  characteristic  marks.  If  the  same  word  (a»^3')}) 
is  to  mean  the  same  thing,  the  "appearance"  to  Peter  and 
James  and  the  twelve  was  no  other  than  the  "  appearance  " 
to  Paul,  and  may  be  construed  by  what  he  predicates  of  him- 
self, and  by  the  conceptions  which  we  Imow  him  to  have  had 
of  Christ's  "  spiritual  body."  By  his  resurrection,  Jesus,  we 
are  told,  became  the  "first-fruits,"! — the  preluding  sample  of 
them  that  sleep  :  their  change,  on  emerging  from  death,  is 
simply  into  the  likeness  of  their  forerunner ;  and  is  described 
by  the  apostle  in  terms  which,  on  the  one  hand,  negative  all 
the  properties   of  mere  aag^  and  ^i^xii,  and,  on   the   other, 

•  1  Cor.  XV.  3-  8.  t  Ibid.  23. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         369 

affirm  those  of  irvivfia, — incorruptibility,  immortality,  and, 
as  manifested,  a  brilliancy  as  of  a  glorious  light.*  This  ideal 
of  the  heavenly  nature  as  conformed  to  Christ's  "  body  of 
glory,"  is  repeated  in  the  letter  to  the  Philippians ; f  and  by 
its  aid  we  must  interpret  not  only  the  apostle's  own  appealing 
and  subduing  vision  of  the  Christ  he  had  been  persecuting, 
but  the  earlier  Christophanies  of  which  he  had  only  heard 
from  others. 

After  what  has  been  said  in  the  section  upon  the  Acts  of 
the  Apostles,  it  is  needless  to  explain  why  we  cannot  accept 
from  this  book,  with  its  three  inconsistent  accounts  of  the 
apostle  Paul's  conversion,  any  correction  of  the  inferences 
warranted  by  his  own  letters. 

It  appears  then,  that,  up  to  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the 
event,  the  apostle  of  the  Gentiles  had  no  other  idea  of  the 
resurrection  of  Jesus  than  of  his  exchanging  the  earthly 
organism  for  the  investiture  with  the  spiritual  essence  of 
heavenly  life  ;  and  no  conception  of  a  Christophany  but  as  a 
manifestation  of  this  life  to  the  spirit  or  inward  vision  of  the 
believer.  As  the  eye  of  spiritual  apprehension  is  different  in 
different  men,  and  the  outward  senses  alone  are  common  to 
all,  it  was  natural  for  the  Jew  or  the  Pagan  to  demand  from 
the  disciples  something  other  than  their  own  subjective  vision 
in  proof  that  "  Christ  lives "  ;  and  to  beg  that  the  appeal 
might  be  carried  from  the  inner  experience  to  the  outer 
perceptions  :  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  traditions  were 
so  moulded  as  to  answer  this  demand.  For,  where  a  number 
of  persons  are  thrown  into  the  same  attitude  of  mind,  pre- 
occupied by  one  intense  image,  eager  with  a  fixed  expectation, 
ffred  by  a  sympathetic  enthusiasm,  the  common  affection 
answers  the  same  end  as  the  identical  constitution  of  the  eye 
and  ear  in  all  of  them.  A  movement  of  thought,  a  glow  of 
feeling,  a  turn  of  will,  beginning  in  one,  will  run  through  all, 
and  induce  a  common  impulse  of  belief  and  act,  precisely 
similar  to  the  effect  of  the  same  objective  experience.  The 
two  sources  of  common  conviction  are  easily  confounded  ;  and 
the  Christian  missionary  who,  in  his  contact  with  unbelieving 
auditors,  felt  the  want  of  support  from  the  former,  was  mider 

»  1  Cor.  XV.  42-50.  t  iii.  21. 

B    B 


370  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

constant  temptation  to  imagine  and  substitute  the  latter. 
There  were  also  current,  as  we  know,  grosser  ideas  than  the 
Pauline  of  what  was  meant  by  the  resurrection  from  the  dead, 
ideas  involving  no  more  than  a  reinstatement  in  the  old 
conditions  of  the  earthly  life  ;  as  when  it  was  imagined  that 
Jesus  was  "  John  the  Baptist,"  or  "  one  of  the  ancient 
prophets  risen  again."*  Among  persons  under  the  influence 
of  such  preconceptions,  there  would  be  a  persistent  desire  for 
more  palpable  evidence,  and  a  stream  of  questions  about  the 
empty  grave,  and,  if  they  were  unbelievers,  about  the  disposal 
of  the  body,  or,  if  believers,  about  the  witnesses'  interviews 
with  their  risen  Master,  the  signs  of  identity  by  which  they 
knew  him,  and  the  time,  place,  and  mode  of  his  final  parting 
from  them.  Ten  years  later,  these  questions,  which  are 
without  meaning  for  the  Pauline  Christian,  but  in  Judaic 
circles  had  probably  long  been  stirred,  had  come  to  the  front 
and  almost  displaced  the  earlier  type  of  faith ;  so  that  in 
Mark's  gospel,  which  had  no  Christophany  at  all,f  but  only 
gives  notice,  at  the  sepulchre,  of  the  distant  theatre  of  their 
occurrence,  it  is  the  surprise  of  the  stone  rolled  away  and  the 
tomb  without  the  corpse,  that  is  superfluously  offered  as  the 
plea  for  this  notice.  To  Paul  and  his  believers  it  would  have 
made  no  difference,  if  the  Jewish  authorities  had  rifled  the 
tomb  and  publicly  replaced  the  body  upon  the  uplifted  cross ; 
this  would  no  more  prevent  the  spirit  he  had  committed  into 
the  Father's  hand  from  putting  on  its  garment  of  heavenly 
light,  than  the  contest  between  Michael  and  Satan  for  the 
body  of  Moses  could  detain  the  Lawgiver  from  his  welcome  by 
the  angels.  This  hovering  of  interest  about  the  tomb, 
natural  as  a  tribute  of  retrospective  memory,  is  out  of  place 
when  turned  into  the  supposed  condition  and  sign  of  the 
visible  realization  of  the  immortal  hope,  and  implies  an 
incipient  materializing  of  the  first  faith.  In  Mark,  it  enters 
into  its  mere  slight  beginning,  not  yet  touching  the  chief 
figure,  but  presenting  only  a  white-robed  messenger  to  tell 
where  he  will  show  himself  to   those   who  seek  him.     The 

*  Luke  ix.  7,  8. 

t  The  proper  close  of  the  Gospel,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  with  chap.  xvi.  8 ; 
the  Appendix  which  follows  being  a  summary,  by  a  later  hand,  of  current 
traditions  respecting  the  appearances  of  the  risen  Christ. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON   OF  JESUS.         371 

women  who  receive  the  message  are  to  send  "  the  disciples  and 
PeUr  "  forthwith  "  into  Gahlee  ;  there  they  will  see  him,  as 
he  had  said  to  them."  This  allusion  is  to  the  last  of  his 
alleged  prophecies,  given  on  the  way  to  Gethsemane,  of  his 
passion  and  resm*rection,  "  Howbeit,  after  I  am  raised  up,  I 
will  go  before  you  into  Galilee."* 

From  this  narrative  it  is  clear  (1)  that  the  evangelist  knew 
of  no  Christophany  on  the  third  day,  either  near  the  sepulchre 
or  at  Jerusalem ;  (2)  that  he  regarded  Galilee  as  the  theatre 
of  the  first  appearances  of  the  risen  Christ ;  (3)  that  apparently 
he  knew  of  no  other  ;  (4)  that  in  these  Galilean  appearances 
Peter's  experience  took  the  lead,  in  agreement  with  the  order 
of  Paul's  enumeration.  According  to  this  conception,  the 
events  conformed  themselves  to  the  anticipation  attributed  to 
^'esus  ;  "  the  shepherd  being  smitten,  the  sheep  were  scattered 
abroad :  "t  by  the  disciples'  flight  the  scene  was  at  once  trans- 
ferred to  Galilee,  and  was  there  re-opened,  when,  amid  the 
quiet  hills  or  by  the  lapping  waters  of  the  beach,  the  inefface- 
able impression  of  his  life  stole  over  their  dismay  at  his  death, 
and  in  spite  of  themselves  breathed  into  their  sorrow  the 
reviving  faith  which  had  so  often  subdued  his  own.  There, 
where  the  tones  of  his  voice  had  scarcely  died  awa}^,  but  were 
still  heard  in  the  memory  of  his  beatitudes,  his  parables,  his 
prayers,  and  they  could  now  see  how,  in  its  divine  calm,  his 
form  stood  out  against  the  city  throng  of  carping  scribes, 
and  angry  priests,  and  noisy  traders,  he  would  more  than 
ever  appear  as  the  "holy  one  of  God,"  to  whom  by  the  very 
wa,y  of  death,  "  He  will  show  the  path  of  life," — whom 
"after  two  days,"  as  the  Scripture  saith,  "He  will  revive," 
and  "  raise  up  on  the  third  day  to  live  before  Him."t 

Of  the  Galilean  Christophanies  which  responded  to  this 
natural  reaction  of  thought  tradition  has  preserved  two 
doubtful  traces,  both  of  them  introduced  at  the  latest  evan- 
gelistic date,  and  lioth  misplaced  at  the  end  instead  of  the 
beginning  of  the  resurrection  storj'.  One  of  them  closes 
Matthew's  gospel  with  an  appearance  thus  described  :  "  The 
eleven  disciples  went  into  Galilee,  to  the  mountain  where  Jesus 
had  appointed  them  ;  and  when  they  saw  him,  they  worshipped 

*  :\Iark  xiv.  28.  t  xiv.  27.  +  Hosea  vi.  2. 

B    B    2 


372  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

him ;  but  some  doubted."*  This  expression  of  objective  un- 
certainty favours  the  idea  of  something  visionary  in  the 
manifestation,  or  some  affection  of  consciousness  which  was 
not  common  or  equal  to  all.  The  other  instance  constitutes 
the  appendix  to  the  fourth  gospel  ;t  in  which  is  described  an 
appearance  of  the  risen  Jesus  to  seven  disciples  at  the  sea 
of  Tiberias,  terminating  with  the  well-known  prophecy  of 
Peter's  martyrdom,  compared  with  John's  indeterminate  con- 
tinuance in  life.  Notwithstanding  the  obviously  mythical 
character  of  this  narrative,  it  is  still  of  historical  interest,  as 
retaining  the  connection  of  the  resurrection  tradition  with 
the  Galilean  localities. 

If  the  faith  and  evidence  that  "  Christ  has  risen  "  and  lives 
in  heaven  arose  and  regathered  his  scattered  "  little  flock  "  in 
the  seats  of  his  chief  ministry,  the  time  usually  allowed  for 
the  consolidation  of  this  belief  must  be  considerably  extended. 
The  return  to  the  homes  in  Galilee, — a  walk  of  100  miles, — 
would  need  the  interval  between  one  Sabbath  day's  jour- 
ney and  another  ;  nor  can  we  treat  the  occurrence  of  the  first 
spiritual  communion  between  the  forsaken  disciples  and  their 
rediscovered  Lord,  depending  as  it  did  on  the  inward  chro- 
nometry  of  their  souls,  as  an  appointment  that  could  be  punc- 
tually and  uniformly  kept.  Nothing  forbids  us  to  allow  what- 
ever time  may  be  required.  The  fancied  necessity  of  forcing 
the  whole  process  through  within  a  few  days,  is  imposed  only 
by  the  later  conception  of  a  bodily  resuscitation  while  the 
organism  could  still  resume  its  suspended  functions ;  and 
belongs  to  the  materialistic  forms  of  tradition  so  curiously 
blended,  in  the  Evangelists,  with  the  primitive  and  Pauline 
mode  of  thought.  "When,  with  an  obvious  awe,  they  transport 
the  risen  Jesus  mysteriously  from  place  to  place,  making  him 
vanish  from  table,!  and  enter  through  closed  doors, §  and  ap- 
pear now  in  one  form  and  now  in  another,  1|  so  as  not  always 
to  be  recognizable  even  through  long  conversations, U  by  dis- 
ciples familiar  with  his  person,  they  seem  intent  on  showing 
that  he  is  invested  with  the  attributes  of  immortal  spirits. 
Yet,  on  one  of  these  very  occasions,  he  is  made  to  say,  "  Sea 

"■  Matt,  xxviii.  16.  \  John  xxi.  %  Luke  xxiv.  31. 

§  John  XX.  19-2G.  ||  Mark  xvi.  12.  ^  Lvike  xxiv.  14-31. 


Chap.  II. J      THEORIES  OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        ztz 

my  hands  and  my  feet ;  handle  me  and  see  :  for  a  spirit  hath 
not  flesh  and  bones,  as  ye  behold  me  have."  *  And,  in  dis- 
IDroof  of  this  same  ineorporeality,  stress  is  repeatedly  laid  on 
the  palpable  signs  of  identity, — the  eating  of  broiled  fish,t  the 
print  of  the  nails,  the  scar  in  the  side.  \  It  is  the  second  of 
these  two  layers  of  tradition  that  has  both  shifted  the  scene 
of  the  Christophanies  to  Jerusalem  as  the  place  of  interment, 
and  thrown  back  the  time  of  the  occurrence  upon  the  third 
■day  (the  date,  probably,  at  which  the  human  soul  was  con- 
ceived to  be  released  for  its  descent  into  Hades)  and  the  few 
more  that  could  be  spared  from  the  waiting  life  in  heaven. 
The  extreme  case  of  this  scant  allowance  of  time  is  in  Luke's 
gospel,  where  the  last  chapter  brings  all  the  appearances  of 
the  risen  Jesus  within  the  resurrection-day,  on  the  evening  of 
which  "he  was  parted  from  them"  over  against  Bethany, 
and  "  carried  up  into  heaven."  Yet  so  regardless  is  the  autnor 
of  consistency,  that,  at  the  opening  of  the  second  part  of  his 
history  (the  Acts  of  the  Apostles)  he  expands  his  one  day  into 
forty,  during  which  Jesus  had  many  interviews  with  the  dis- 
ciples, and  at  the  end  of  which  he  gave  them  their  commission 
as  witnesses  of  him,  and  visibly  ascended  through  the  clouds 
into  heaven. §  Nor  is  Luke's  contradiction  of  the  Galilean  tra- 
dition less  direct  in  regard  to  place  than  in  regard  to  time  ;  for 
he  definitely  detains  the  whole  of  the  apostles  at  Jerusalem,  by 
an  express  order  from  Jesus  not  to  leave  it  till  the  day  of  Pente- 
cost shall  have  armed  them  with  their  divine  credentials.     We 

•  Luke  xxiv.  39.  f  Ibid.  xxiv.  42.  %  John  xx.  27,  28. 

§  Harnack  remarks  on  the  wavering  character  of  the  traditions  about  the 
Ascension  :  "  Paul  has  as  yet  no  knowledge  of  it ;  nor  is  it  mentioned  by 
Clement,  Ignatius,  Hcrmas  or  Polycarp.  It  had  no  place  in  tlic  oldest  pro- 
mulgation of  the  gospel.  The  formulas  often  combine  the  Resurrection  and 
Sitting  at  the  right-hand  of  God  (Eph.  i.  20  and  Acts  ii.  32,  scq(i.).  Accord- 
ing to  Luke  xxiv.  51  and  Barnabas  xv.  9,  perhaps  al.so  John  xx.  27,  the 
Ascension  took  place  on  the  day  of  the  Resurrection,  and  is  hardly  to  be 
understood  as  an  event  happening  only  once  ffor  the  origin  of  the  idea  the 
passages  John  iii.  13,  and  vi.  G2,  are  very  instructive  ;  see  also  Rom.  x.  6, 
seq^.,  Kph.  iv.  9,  scq.,  1  Pet.  iii.  19,  seg.).  According  to  the  Valentinians 
and  Ophites  (Iren.  I.  iii.  2,  xxx.  14)  Christ  was  taken  to  licaven  eighteen 
months,  according  to  the  Ascensio  Isaise  (ed.  Dillmann,  p.  43,  57,  &c.,  s.c.  ix. 
16)  545  days,  according  to  the  Pistis  Sophia  eleven  years  after  the  Resurrec- 
tion. The  statement  that  the  Ascension  took  place  forty  days  after  the 
Resurrection  appears  first  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles."  Lehrb.  d.  Dogmen- 
geschichte,  B.  I.  p.  172,  note  1. 


374  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

must  conclude  that,  since  the  composition  of  his  gospel,  some- 
thing had  brought  home  to  the  evangelist  the  need  of  a  larger 
allowance  of  time  to  find  room  for  the  known  historical  order 
of  development  of  the  young  community.  That  an  interval  of 
suspense  still  more  considerable  followed  on  the  crucifixion 
may  be  fairly  inferred,  as  Weizsiicker  remarks,*  from  the 
account  which  Tacitus  gives  of  the  origin  of  the  Christian 
denomination :  "  It  had  its  origin  from  Ohristus,  who  in  the 
reign  of  Tiberius  had  been  executed  by  the  procurator  Pontius 
Pilate.  The  deadly  superstition,  though  suppressed  for  a 
time,  broke  out  again  and  spread  not  only  through  Judea, 
which  was  first  to  suffer  from  it,  but  through  Piome  also,  the 
resort  which  draws  to  it  all  that  is  hideous  and  shameful."  t 
The  interruption  and  period  of  suppression  which  are  here 
implied,  and  which  are  consistent  with  all  that  we  learn  from 
the  apostle  Paul,  disappeared  from  view,  under  the  influence 
of  the  later  tradition  of  bodily  Christophanies,  and  left  in  its 
place  the  continuous  storj^  around  the  tomb  as  its  centre, 
which  the  harmonists  gather  from  our  evangelists.  Yet,  even 
here,  there  are  unobliterated  vestiges  of  the  historic  truth  in 
the  mention  of  the  "  scattered  sheep,"  of  the  "  going  before  " 
of  the  risen  Christ  "  into  Galilee,"  of  the  appointed  and  the 
actual  meeting  with  the  disciples  there,  under  conditions  so 
far  mystical  that,  in  the  absence  of  adequate  spiritual  pre- 
paration, "  some  doubted."  If  the  life  of  the  Crucified  with 
God  were  revealed  by  "  heavenly  vision,"  the  reason  is  plain 
why  he  appeared  only  to  his  disciples.  But  were  it  announced 
by  a  return  of  the  human  personality  in  its  bodily  frame,  it  is 
impossible  to  account  for  his  having  never  appeared  to  the 
enemies  and  blind  multitude  who  most  needed  to  be  convinced. 
In  such  case,  well  might  Peter  say  to  them  that  had  "killed 
the  Prince  of  Life,"  "  I  know,  brethren,  that  in  ignorance  ye 
did  it."  X  If  Jesus  would  neither,  before  his  passion,  suffer 
his  Messiahship  to  be  told  to  any  man,  nor,  after  it,  present 
liimself  in  living  evidence  of  it  to  those  who  knew  it  not,  how 
is  it  possible,  on  the  strength  of  a  single  refusal  at  his  trial  to 
disown  the  character,  to  treat  the  downfall  of  the  Jewish  state 
and  what  is  caHed  the  "  casting-off  of  Israel,"  as  the  righteous 
*  Das  apostolische  Zeitalter,  S.  1.      t  Tacitus,  Ann.  XV.  44.      +  Acts  iii.  17. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES  OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        375 

judgment  of  God  on  a  people  who  laid  hands  upon  his  Son, 
misled  hy  his  reserve  and  his  disguise  ? 

The  dependent  and  supplementary  character  of  the  tra- 
ditional Christophanies  at  or  near  the  sepulchre  is  indicated 
by  their  aimlessness.  They  simply  serve  the  purpose,  already 
served  by  the  message  of  the  angel,  of  referring  the  disciples 
to  the  real  rendezvous  in  Galilee  ;  or  else,  of  merely  verifying 
the  fact  of  "  the  rising  on  the  third  day  "  already  known  as  a 
necessity  "  according  to  the  scriptures."  The  real  object  of 
the  interview  appointed  by  the  heavenly  Christ  with  his  dis- 
ciples was  that  they  might  receive  from  him  their  mission  to 
take  up  his  gospel  of  the  Kingdom  and  proclaim  it  to  the  world 
until  his  return.  This  was  the  end  of  his  appearing ;  and  the 
idea  of  reducing  it  to  a  mere  evidential  instrument,  as  if  pro- 
phetic certainty  needed  eking  out  by  palpable  perception, 
plainly  belongs  to  the  temper  of  a  later  time. 

And  in  the  whole  series  of  traditions,  whether  referring  to 
Galilee  or  Jerusalem,  we  cannot  fail  to  observe,  as  a  mark  of 
their  visionary  character,  their  conformity,  not  to  the  relations 
of  the  universe  as  it  objectively  exists,  with  its  infinite  space 
sown  with  scattered  worlds,  but  to  the  little  cabinet  picture  of 
the  Jewish  imagination, — the  angels  in  white,  the  celestial 
home  just  above  the  clouds,  from  which  the  heavenly  mes- 
sengers promise  Messiah's  return,  and  to  which  the  person  of 
Jesus  visibly  ascends,  the  throne  of  God  and  the  seat  of  Jesus 
beside  him.  So  long  as  we  find  ourselves  in  scenery  like  this, 
we  evidently  stand  within  the  mind  of  the  seer  who  paints  it, 
and  must  seek  the  whole  drama  for  which  he  prepares  it  in 
his  own  experience. 

From  this  review  of  the  early  Christian  traditions  we  issue 
with  one  indisputable  historical  fact, — the  intense  belief  of 
the  personal  disciples  of  Jesus  and  of  their  quondam  perse- 
cutor Paul,  that,  in  spite  of  the  cross  and  the  sepulchre,  he 
had  passed  into  a  heavenly  life  whence  he  would  visit  or 
whither  he  would  lift  those  who  were  his  b}-  the  pure  power 
of  faith  and  love.  That  belief  was  the  essence  of  their 
message,  the  inspiration  of  their  labours,  the  creative  energy 
out  of  which  Christendom  was  born.  If  we  find  that  it  did 
not  ccme  to  them   by  physical   experience,    by   handling  a 


376  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

resuscitated  body,  by  talking  on  the  road  with  a  mysterious 
stranger,  lost  as  soon  as  identified  in  the  breaking  of  bread, 
by  ascension  of  a  standing  figure  from  their  midst  into  the 
clouds,  is  it  stripped  of  its  validity  and  dropped  out  of  the 
religion  ?  If  we  find  that  of  no  one  else,  under  like  external 
conditions,  would  they  have  had  this  belief,  that  it  was  con- 
tingent on  their  state  of  mind  towards  him  alone,  that  it  was 
due  to  a  personality  of  unique  power  to  enshrine  itself  in 
reverence  and  love  and  render  Death  itself  conceivable  only 
as  a  new  birth,  do  we  on  this  account  turn  it  into  an  illusion  ? 
On  the  contrary,  no  physical  fact,  simply  as  perceived,  touches 
the  essence  of  religion,  but  lies  within  the  knowledge  of  the 
seen ;  while  all  faith  in  the  unseen,  inseparable  from  trust  in 
the  Divine  Perfection,  is  born  out  of  the  inner  experiences  of 
the  soul  in  looking  up  to  one  who  at  once  lifts  and  humbles 
it,  out  of  the  infinite  moral  ideality  of  the  human  affections. 
When  I  am  told  that,  to  be  his  disciple,  I  must  believe  in  the 
resurrection  of  Jesus,  I  invert  the  order,  and  reply,  to  believe 
that  Jesus  is  risen  and  lives  the  heavenly  life,  I  must  be  his 
disciple.  Unless,  with  the  little  flock  Avho  could  not  leave 
him  because  he  had  the  words  of  eternal  life,  I  recognize  in 
him  the  attributes  that  are  worth  immortalizing, — indeed, 
cannot  dispense  with  it, — I  shall  not  invest  him  with  immor- 
tality ;  and  if  they  bring  me  to  his  feet,  I  shall  not  go  in  quest 
of  his  body  out  of  the  tomb,  as  if  it  were  the  Holy  Grail.  Not 
only  do  I  conceive  that  the  disciples'  visions  of  him  as  risen 
depend  on  their  entrancement  by  his  transcendent  personality, 
and  could  never  have  visited  them  had  he  been  of  lower 
spiritual  stature,  but  I  also  admit  that  for  us  these  visions 
cannot  in  themselves  serve  as  objective  proofs  of  his  immortal 
life.  As  psychological  facts  in  the  consciousness  of  others, 
their  validity  is  simply  for  the  persons  to  whom  they  were 
present ;  and  to  us  the  only  thing  they  attest  is,  the  intense 
power  of  his  spirit  over  the  springs  of  veneration  and  trust  in 
them.  We  may  be  sure  that  if  there  were  a  cj^nic  or  a 
Sadducee,  or  even  an  indifferent  stranger,  mixed  up  with  the 
five  hundred  brethren  at  once  on  the  Galilean  mountain,  the 
vision  could  not  come  to  him.  And  if  the  indifferent  stranger, 
though  seeing  nothing  himself,  were  to  let  himself  be  borne 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        2>77 

down  hy  the  multitude  of  affirming  witnesses  and  accept  their 
report  on  trust,  it  will  have  no  hold  upon  him  as  a  personal 
faith  like  theirs,  but  sit  outside,   ready  at  any  call  to  drop 
away.     Take  away  the  interplay  of  soul  on  soul,  in  the  direct 
moral  experience  of  higher  character,  and  you  dry  up  the  very 
sources  of  conception  for  any  divine  humanity.     They  are  not 
felt  in  their  fulness  of  powder  except  in  such  living  relations  as 
those  between  the  disciples  and  their  Master,  where  the  per- 
sonal impressions  are  conveyed  through  voice  and  eye  and 
kindling  features  which  bring  the  inner  thought  on  to  the 
transparent  plane  of  imagination  ;  so  that  in  the  front  of  the 
saints  in  heaven  are  ever  the  greatest  and  loveliest  we  have 
known  on  earth.     But  where  the  materials  adequately  exist 
of  historical  portraiture,  of  a  life  too  simple  for  invention, 
too  human  to  be  less  than  real,  and  so  deep  in  thought  and 
pure  in  spirit  as  clearly  to  be  fed  from  springs  divine,  the 
record  carries  in    its  representation  no  little  of   the  power 
belonging  to  the  personal  presentation.     It  furnishes  a  new 
measure  of  the  contents  of  the  nature  it  exemplifies :  it  ex- 
pands the   possibilities  of  humanity  to  godlike  dimensions, 
and,  with  the  possibilities,  its  aims,  its  duties,  and  the  scope 
of  its  being  and  its  hopes.     The  faith   that   thus   becomes 
irresistible  towards  one  who  rises  to  the  spiritual  headship  of 
our  race  can  certainly  become  universal  in  its  application  only 
on  the  assumption  that  the  essence  and  destination  of  a  nature 
are  not  overpassed,  but  simply  developed  and  brought  to  light, 
in  its  supreme  example ;  below  which  there  is  ever  an  assimi- 
lating power  and  even  an  upward  pressure,  which  make  the 
ultimate  standard   one  for  all.     This  is    no  other  than  the 
apostle's  thought  "  As  he  lives,  w^e  shall   live  also."     Xow 
that  Christendom  has  W'ell  learned  this  generalization,  and 
that  as  the  disciples  reported  it  by  their  personal  experience, 
now  dim  and  secondary  for  us,  so  we  rather  let  it  rest  on 
saintly  souls  we  have  known  and  loved,  it  is  not  unnatural  to 
turn  the  inference  round,  and  including  the  historical  instance 
in  the  human,  say,  "  As  we  shall  all  live,  he  has  risen  also." 
In  either  case,  the  last  secret  of  the  faith  is  the  same ;  the 
"  loved  and  like  of  God  are  loved  and  more  like  for  ever." 


378  SEVERANCE    OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 


§  3.  A%  the  Spiritual  Adam. 

The  interval  between  Eomanism  and  Eationalism  in  our 
time  is  not  wider  than  that  which,  in  and  before  the  apostohc 
age,  separated  the  different  schools  of  Jewish  Messianic  theo- 
logy. As  the  whole  theory  was  a  product  of  fancy,  working 
upon  obscure  and  shifting  prophetic  limits,  it  broke  into  as 
many  forms  as  the  poets'  pictures  of  the  golden  age.  Men 
asked  one  another,  "  What  think  ye  of  Christ  ?  Whose  son  is 
he  ?  Whence  will  he  come  ?  Wlio  will  go  before  him  ?  Who 
will  be  with  him  ?  What  will  he  do  ?  "  and  quarrelled  about 
the  answers  ;  and  never  thought  of  raising  the  question 
whether  they  were  not  disputing  about  a  personage  entirely 
imaginary ;  just  as  they  now  debate  whether  the  efficacy  of 
the  sacraments  depends  upon  the  form  of  words,  whether  it 
lies  in  the  objective  act  or  in  the  recipient's  condition,  whether 
it  is  rightly  expressed  by  this  or  that  elevation  of  the  arms  or 
bending  of  the  knees :  and  forget  to  determine  the  previous 
question  whether,  in  their  sense,  there  is  any  efficacy  at  all. 
Happily,  in  these  ideal  worlds,  extensive  unity  is  rarely  possi- 
ble, or  the  blindness  would  be  truly  terrible  :  the  diversities  of 
error,  pressing  against  each  other,  yield  at  last,  as  their 
resultant,  the  simple  line  of  truth.  So  was  it  in  the  earliest 
years  of  Christendom  as  in  the  latest.  There  was  latitude 
enough  in  the  conception  of  Messiah  for  adaptation  to  differing 
wants,  and  wholesome  conflict  between  minds  of  various  scope. 
Whether  he  was  to  be  some  old  king  or  prophet  sent  back  in 
person  to  inaugurate  the  final  glory  of  Palestine,  or  some  heir 
of  the  royal  line  ;  whether  he  was  to  be  of  human  kind,  or  a 
delegate  from  the  powers  of  the  upper  world  ;  nay,  whether 
even  the  promise  might  not  be  fulfilled,  without  personal 
representative  at  all,  in  a  Divine  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  of 
Truth  and  Eighteousness  :  these  were  questions  which  the 
prophets  had  left  open,  and  which  were  differently  answered 
by  the  scribes  in  Jerusalem,  the  Hellenists  of  Asia,  and  the 
schools  of  Alexandria. 

There  was  ample  room,  therefore,  for  a  new  theory  about 
the  person  of  Jesus  and  the  meaning  of  his  death,  as  soon  as 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        379 

a  fresh  and  original  mind  was  awakened  to  see  the  promise 
reaHzed  in  him  ;  and  no  sooner  had  Saul  of  Tarsus  obeyed 
his  vision  of  the  risen  Christ,  than  he  framed  from  it  a  scheme 
which  has  scarcely  anything  in  common  with  the  Petrine 
gospel  except  the  central  name.  It  was  impossible  that  he 
should  rest  satisfied  with  the  doctrine  which  sufficed  for  the 
Galilean  twelve,  of  a  suffering  Messiah,  whose  advent  was 
simply  ^9?(i  off  d,  while  by  death.  About  a  mere  postponement 
of  date  and  gain  of  time,  if  that  were  all  that  could  be  got  out 
of  the  cross,  he  little  cared.  He  wanted  something  larger, 
freer,  more  humane,  than  any  national  glory  under  a  resusci- 
tated David  or  perpetuated  Moses.  His  school-days  in  a 
Grecian  city,  his  daily  contact  with  its  manners  and  its  arts, 
his  trade  with  the  shepherds  on  the  hills  above  and  the  cap- 
tains of  the  port  below,  had  opened  to  him  a  world  which  it 
were  more  divine  to  save  than  to  destroy ;  whose  idolatries  had 
not  sealed  up  the  springs  of  pity,  justice,  and  fidelity,  and 
w'hose  children  were  as  bright  and  as  susceptible  as  any 
Israelitish  nursery  could  show.  At  the  same  time,  his  own 
vehement  and  capacious  nature  moved  uneasily,  though  on 
that  very  account  with  the  more  intensity,  wdthin  the  narrow 
discipline  of  his  inherited  religion  ;  and  was  ready  to  burst  its 
ligaments  and,  if  only  the  lash  would  be  quiet  on  the  will,  to 
achieve  a  double  fleetness  on  the  wing  of  love.  With  this 
larger  view  of  the  world,  this  leaning  to  Gentile  sympathies, 
this  secret  sense  of  the  dead-weight  of  the  Mosaic  law,  this 
inability  to  contemplate  the  universal  government  of  God 
shrinking  in  its  consummation  to  the  dimensions  of  Palestine, 
he  would  seize  on  an  ij  plea  for  substituting  a// »//;a»  in  place  of 
a  Jewish  hope.  This  plea  he  found  in  the  present  abode  of 
Christ. 

Saul,  to  whom  the  person  of  Jesus  was  unknown,  in  whose 
memory  were  no  lingering  echoes  of  his  voice,  who  could  rehearse 
in  thought  no  tender  and  solemn  passages  from  the  Galilean 
ministry,  had  a  mind  blank  as  to  that  Inunan  drama.  In  his 
letters,  the  whole  contents  of  that  sacred  life,  from  the  nativity 
to  the  last  passover,  are  left  without  any  allusion ;  nor  from 
them  alone  would  the  reader  ever  know  that  there  was  a  bap- 
tism in  Jordan,  or  a  temptation  in  the  wilderness,  or  a  sermon 


38o        'SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Rook  IV. 

on  the  mount,  or  a  mighty  work  of  pity,  or  a  parable  of  tender 
wisdom,  or  a  scathing  of  hypocrites,  or  an  iipHfting  of  peni- 
tents, or  an  agony  in  Gethsemane,  of  one  who  bore  the  name 
of  the  "  Son  of  Man."  His  apostleship  had  been  exercised 
for  three  years,  before  he  had  contact  with  the  predecessors 
who  could  tell  him  of  these  things ;  nor  could  the  historical 
Imowledge  thus  rendered  accessible  fill  in  the  theoretic  outline 
of  his  teaching  with  any  forms  and  colours  of  the  past,  or  any 
living  traits  of  his  inspirer's  personality.  The  whole  space  is 
reserved  for  a  single  thought,  flashed  upon  him  in  his  conver- 
sion and  conveying  to  him  his  mission — "Messiah  the  crucified 
lives  icith  God  in  heaven.''  That  one  conception  suffices  as  the 
seed  of  a  new  faith.  Was  he  indeed  in  heaven  ?  Not  in  the 
caverns  of  Hades  among  the  shades  of  the  dead,  where 
Abraham  and  David  and  Isaiah  waited  for  the  latter  days, 
with  the  frequent  sigh,  "  Oh  Lord,  how  long?"  but  excep- 
tionally lifted  into  the  upper  light  where  angels  dwell  and  no 
human  being  is  found,  save  the  three  glorified  prophets, 
Enoch,  Moses,  and  Elijah  ?  Then  he  surely  is  of  like  nature 
with  the  beings  there, — the  spirits  who  form  that  divine  en- 
vironment of  God ;  and  has  been  invested  with  that  nature, — 
nay,  rather  has  returned  to  it  as  already  his, — after  having 
lived  the  traditionary  life  of  men  below.  Was  it  then  to  be 
supposed  that  once  exalted  to  transcendent  rank  in  the  spiritual 
world,  he  would  come  back  a  little  later  to  the  earthly  condi- 
tions which  he  had  just  laid  down,  and  set  up  the  national 
kingdom  in  Jerusalem  ?  Had  he  burst  the  chains  of  humanity 
only  to  resume  them,  after  the  blessed  vacation  of  a  divine 
freedom  ?  No  :  if  Messiah  had  to  die  and  to  go  to  heaven,  it 
w^as  for  something  better  than  that.  He  had  escaped  the 
restraints  of  nationality  ;  he  looked  down  upon  the  earth  from 
a  station  at  whose  height  the  frontier  posts  of  jealous  lands, 
and  the  complexions  of  peoples,  and  the  confusion  of  tongues, 
disappear,  and  the  rivers  and  the  mountain-chains  run  through 
the  silent  picture  and  dispose  of  the  human  race  as  one.  He 
was  living  in  a  divine  society  where  no  pedigrees  are  kept,  and 
lineage  is  of  no  account,  for  they  are  immortals,  and  have  one 
Father,  God.  He  was  the  associate  of  natures  intrinsically 
holy,  who  served  the  perfect  Will  with  saintly  joy ;  and  had 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        381 

his  own  obcclience  released  from  the  strain  of  conflict  and  the 
exaction  of  tears.  Who  could  believe  that,  from  such  a  scene, 
he  was  to  come,  only  to  pick  up  the  broken  thread  of  his 
career,  and  finish  what  he  had  begun  ?  To  set  his  apostles  on 
twelve  thrones  for  judging  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel  ?  to  un- 
lock the  doors  of  the  outer  darkness  and  sweep  into  it  the 
unbelieving  nations  "to  weep  and  wail  and  gnash  their  teeth  "  ? 
and  to  rule  over  the  select  minority  of  men  still  subject  to  the 
appetites  of  flesh  and  blood  ?  No,  if  indeed  he  is  to  return  to 
us,  it  will  be  not  to  reassume  our  nature,  but  to  transform  us 
into  the  likeness  of  his  own  :  ice  shall  be  caught  into  the  con- 
tagion of  his  glory,  not  lie  descend  again  into  our  limitations. 
No  longer  Israelite,  he  listens  to  no  muster-roll  of  tribes. 
Among  the  immortal  scenes  of  God,  the  earthly  order  dies, 
and  the  first-born  can  talk  no  more  so  exceeding  proudly. 
Born  under  the  law,  he  has  emerged  from  it  in  death,  and 
loves  all  minds  in  the  proportions  and  by  the  affinities  of  holi- 
ness. Clothed  with  an  imperishable  spiritual  life,  he  will 
gather  around  him  when  he  comes,  and  perhaps  before  he 
comes,  a  society  similar  to  himself,  abolishing  the  weakness 
of  humanity  and  changing  its  "  vile  body  "  into  the  likeness 
of  his  "  glorious  body." 

This  was  the  light  that  broke  upon  Paul,  when  the  scales 
fell  from  his  eyes :  this,  the  meaning  of  the  hcavoihi  man 
(6  aV3-pto7roc,-  £^  ovQavov)  whom  God  sent  to  commune  with  him 
and  bid  him  stand  on  his  feet  in  newness  of  life  :  it  meant 
the  inauguration  of  a  hcavoih}  humanity,  freedom  from  the 
burdens  of  an  earthly  nature,  and  quickened  by  the  "  spirit 
of  holiness,"  from  a  divine  and  immortal  Head.  To  the 
other  apostles  Jesus  might  be  Messiah,  because  he  was  the 
*'  Son  of  David ;  "  and  to  them  the  tragedy  of  Calvary  was  a 
shock  of  postponement  which  it  cost  them  some  faitli  and 
patience  to  endure.  To  Paul  there  was  no  Christ  till  he 
appeared,  in  his  spiritual  essence  and  power,  as  "  Son  of 
God  "  and  "  Lord  "  in  heaven.  This  it  was  that  defined  his 
title  and  opened  his  living  energy  as  realizer  of  the  Divine 
purpose  for  humanity.  "  He  was  born  of  the  seed  of  David 
according  to  the  flesh,  but  defined  to  be  the  Son  of  God 
with  power,  according  to  the  spirit  of  holiness  by  the  resur- 


382  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

rection  of  the  dead."*  His  death  was  not  his  casting  down 
but  his  "  Hfting  up,"  that  he  "  might  draw  all  men  mito  him  : " 
it  was  the  step  to  his  enthronement :  it  was  not  his  tem- 
porary absence  in  "  a  far  comitry,"  but  the  beginning  of  his 
intimate  presence  with  his  disciples,  his  inseparable  union 
with  those  who  found  their  spiritual  life  in  him.  His  per- 
sonal followers,  scattered  from  his  tomb  in  dismay,  "  as 
sheep  when  the  shepherd  is  smitten,"  had  relieved  their 
recoil  from  his  fate  by  fitting  to  it  passages  from  the  prophets 
which  might  have  prepared  them  for  it,  and  they  reconciled 
themselves  to  it,  as  a  supreme  example  of  the  sufferings  of 
the  righteous,  which  were  still  left,  after  every  plea,  among 
the  pathetic  mysteries  of  God.  To  them,  it  could  never  quite 
cease  to  be  an  ungrounded  and  arbitrary  event,  prophesied  in 
the  Old  Testament  because  it  was  to  happen,  and  then 
happening  because  it  had  been  prophesied,  but  serving  no 
obvious  end  except  to  gain  a  little  time  and  swell  the  number 
of  disciples  to  meet  him  on  his  return.  This  was  a  lame  and 
inadequate  account  of  a  suffering  Messiah,  if,  when  he  came 
at  last,  he  was  to  be  the  same  and  to  do  the  same,  which  had 
been  expected  from  him  at  first,  viz.,  "to  restore  the  king- 
dom to  Israel."  To  Paul,  it  flung  both  the  adopted  Israel 
and  the  outcast  Heathendom  into  the  cancelled  Past,  and 
delivered  the  race  which  embraced  them  both  to  its  ideal 
representative  in  heaven  ;  that,  by  assimilation  to  himself,  he 
might  give  forth  a  new  edition  of  humanity,  released  from 
the  tyranny  of  sense  and  self,  and  consecrated  to  the  service 
of  the  pure  and  perfect  will  of  God.  He  who  was  thus  to 
abolish  Sin  and  Death  must  emerge  from  the  scene  which 
they  overshadowed  :  to  deliver  from  the  mortal  weight,  he 
must  escape  it :  to  found  a  regenerate  society,  quick  with  the 
powers  of  spiritual  life,  he  must  be  "  the  first-born  of  many 
brethren."  Thus  Calvary  becomes  the  very  pivot  of  the 
whole  design,  the  critical  hour  when  it  begins  to  work,  the 
negative  deep,  in  which,  as  it  is  crossed,  are  dropped 
the  fetters  for  ever  loosed  :  as  the  exaltation  to  heaven  is 
the  crown  and  completion  of  his  investiture,  his  active  as- 
sumption  of   the    spiritual  headship  of   mankind.     It  is  no 

*  Rom.  i.  3,  4. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         383 

v^oncler  then  if,  on  this  account  alone,  apart  from  other 
grounds  on  which  something  will  be  hereafter  said,  the  cross 
is,  with  Paul,  never  excused  and  left  at  the  door  of  the  pro- 
phets, for  the  scribes  to  deal  with  as  they  may ;  but  is  his 
boast,  his  joy,  his  strength ;  the  central  fact  from  which  he 
reasons,  and  without  which,  whatever  Jesus  might  historically 
be,  there  would  have  been  no  gospel  for  the  man  of  Tarsus. 
It  is  the  symbol  and  the  opening  of  the  universal  change,  not 
only  in  the  character  and  feeling,  but  in  the  very  constitution, 
and  with  the  constitution  the  destiny,  of  human  nature. 

To  understand  the  apostle's  language  on  the  new  life  in 
Christ  that  radiated  from  him  in  heaven,  we  must  possess 
ourselves  of  his  conceptions  of  the  actual  constitution  of  the 
two  w^orlds,  human  and  divine,  of  the  measure  of  their  con- 
trast, and  the  conditions  of  their  reconciliation.  Their 
opposition  was  not,  in  his  view,  a  gradual  divergence  that 
slowly  spread  from  a  primary  similarity :  nor  even  any 
sudden  fall  that  disappointed  an  intended  order  in  which  all 
w'as  good :  but  was  based  on  the  very  material  out  of  which 
the  Creative  hand  had  moulded  the  parents  of  our  race. 
His  words,  that  the  first  man  was  "  of  the  earth,  earthy  " 
(k-  7(]c  xoV/voV)*  and  that  he  "became  a  living  creature" 
(1//UX1/  Z,Maa),\  show  that  he  started  from  the  statement  in 
Genesis,  that  the  Lord  God  formed  man  of  the  dust  of  the 
ground,  and  breathed  into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life " 
(tti-o};  ^w>Jc')-+  The  substance  thus  arising  from  the  infusion 
of  breath  into  dust  {\o\jq)  \;asS  flesh  (o-ao^) ;  and  this  it  is  of 
which  the  human  being,  as  an  animal,  with  conscious  senses 
and  moving  limbs,  is  made :  it  is,  as  we  should  say,  inorganic 
matter  become  organic  and  sensitive.  The  vital  element  put 
into  it  by  the  divine  irvoiij,  though  coming  from  God  as  TTvtvfxa 
and,  when  separately  named,  called  -djvxn  (breath),  is  by  no 
means  regarded  as  carrying  in  it  any  share  of  the  divine 
Essence  ;  for  it  does  not  avail  to  save  '  Flesh  '  from  the  most 
absolute  antithesis  to  '  Spirit,'  as  no  less  the  distinctive 
substance  of  the  Divine  nature  than  aaos  is  of  the  human. 
As  a  transient  whiff  of  a  breath  that  has  left  his  source,  all  it 
can  do  is  to  convey  a  new  propert}'  into  the  matter  which  it 

*  1  Cor.  XV.  i7.      '  t  Ibid.  xv.  15.  *  Gen.  ii.  7. 


384  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

penetrates,  waking  it  into  consciousness  of  what  it  feels  and 
where  it  is.  But  all  the  added  power  thus  set  up  is  given  to 
the  stuff  of  which  the  man  is  made ;  and  the  change  to  him, 
when  lifted  into  a  feeling  Self,  is  in  simply  knowing  it  and 
becoming  his  own  spectator.  There  is  henceforth  an  "  inner 
man"  that  stands  off  from  "  the  outer,"  to  notice  and  appre- 
hend its  contents :  and  this  aspect  of  the  human  t/^ux*/  a-s 
subjective  intelligence  undoubtedly  receives,  in  distinction 
from  the  o-aps-factor  of  the  composite  man,  the  name  of  vovq, — 
and  even  Trvevfia,  seeing  that  this  is  the  seat  assigned  for  the  cor- 
responding intellectual  function  in  God.  Thus  the  apostle  asks 
"Who  among  men  knoweth  the  things  of  a  man,  save  tlie 
spirit  of  the  man  that  is  in  him ;  even  as  the  things  of  God 
none  knoweth,  save  the  spirit  of  God:"*  implying  that,  in 
respect  of  conscious  self-knowledge,  the  human  and  the  Divine 
natures  were  similar,  having  an  attribute  which  was  beyond 
the  resources  of  "  flesh,"  and  was  so  far  "  spiritual."  But  this 
"  spirit  "  of  the  finite  person  detached  from  its  infinite  source, 
is  empty  of  all  initiative  power,  and  goes  no  further  than 
theoretic  insight :  it  sees,  but  only  like  the  dreamer  through 
some  inward  tragedy  in  which  he  never  stirs ;  and  so  is 
utterly  opposite  to  the  real  essence  of  spirit,  i.e.,  to  the  Spirit 
of  God,  wdiich  is  eternally  active,  and  in  its  thinking  creates, 
and  in  conceiving  the  holy  and  the  true,  institutes  the  ordered 
steps  that  shall  bring  them  to  i^ass. 

'  Spirit '  in  heaven  then  is  quite  another  thing  from  that 
which  bears  the  same  name  on  earth.  In  its  proper  home, 
it  is  as  truly  the  essence  of  all  living  natures  as  "  flesh  "  is 
here  below ;  of  God  himself,  rendering  him  intrinsically 
invisible ;  of  his  angels,  charged  with  his  gifts  and  messages 
of  power  and  righteousness  ;  of  Christ,  the  well-beloved  first- 
born of  the  regenerate  and  sanctified  family  of  man  ;  and  of 
all  the  saints  that  may  be  gathered  to  him  there.  As  the 
viewless  air  and  wind  serve  for  symbols  of  the  invisible  power 
of  the  infinite  God,  so  does  light  supjjly  the  means  of  giving 
form  and  celestial  beauty  to  the  finite  ministers  of  his  will 
and  children  of  his  love:  their  body  (o-w/^a),  unlike  our 
organisms  "  of  flesh  and  blood  which  cannot  enter  into  the 

*  1  Cor.  ii.  11. 


Cl:ap.  II.]      THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        3S5 

kingdom  of  heaven,"  is  conceived  by  the  Apostle  as  woven  of 
sunbeams  or  kiminous  air,  and  described  as  "  glorious," 
"  heavenly,"  "  spiritual ;  "  unburdened  by  material  hin- 
drances, and  a  fit  vehicle  of  the  immortal  life  and  love  which 
transcend  all  earthly  experience  and  mould  it  into  the  service 
of  the  eternal  "Will.  "  There  is  a  natural  body,  and  there 
is  a  spiritual  body:"  the  former,  our  heritage  from 
Adam ;  exchanged  for  the  latter  by  union  with  the  heavenly 
Christ. 

From  the  defect  of  this  divine  element  in  man,  and  his 
surrender  to  the  properties  of  a  carnal  organism,  the  apostle 
deduces  all  his  infirmity  and  misery.  It  is  the  very  essence 
of  "  flesh,  "  in  his  view,  to  be  the  seat  of  Sin  and  Death  ;  of 
Sin,  because  the  susceptibilities  of  Sense  awaken  desire  and 
stimulate  action,  which  carry  away  the  natural  man  untouched 
by  spiritual  power,  and  deliver  him  as  a  bond-slave,  "  sold 
under  sin;"  of  Death,  because,  as  intrinsically  perishable,  it 
spontaneously  executes  the  sentence,  "  the  soul  that  sinneth, 
it  shall  die."  Of  o-o'os,  as  substance,  liri^vyna,  its  essential 
activity  is,  in  the  Pauline  sense,  anapTiu, — the  very  principle 
of  evil  which  leads  men  astray  ;  and  is  still  regarded  as  such, 
although,  in  the  instinctive  life  not  yet  submitted  to  law,  it  is 
without  the  consciousness  of  the  guilt  of  sin.  To  us  this 
seems  a  strange  conception,  that  men  may  be  sinners  without 
knowing  it,  accustomed  as  we  are  to  apply  it  only  to  cases  of 
voluntary  choice ;  but  the  apostle,  in  order  to  seize  it  in  its 
objective  reality,  thinks  of  it  as  it  would  look  to  the  Divine 
mind,  that  sees  what  ought  to  be  instead.  He  treats  it  as  in 
itself  the  same  fact,  whether  hiding  its  character  in  the 
animal  darkness,  or  turned  by  the  true  light  of  a  Divme  IvruXij 
into  positive  transgression  {Trapd^cKng). 

In  either  case,  whether  aware  of  his  wretched  fate  or  not, 
man  is  subjected  to  sin  by  the  very  constitution  of  his  nature. 
If  simply  disposed  of  by  his  uppermost  impulses,  he  cheerfully 
goes  into  all  that  is  unrighteous.  If  he  "assent  to  the  rule 
of  right  that  it  is  good,"  and  even  "  delight  in  the  will  of  God 
after  the  inner  man,"  still,  alas  !  it  makes  no  difference;  for 
this  is  only  vision,  not  power  ;  '  he  finds  another  law  in  his 
members,  warring  against  the  law  of  his  mind,  and  bringing 

c  c 


386  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Qoo\^lV. 

him  into  captivity '  *  so  that  he  cannot  cease  from  sin,  and 
is  tied  to  "a  body  of  death."  Nor  is  it  merely  the  appetites 
of  Sense  that  drag  him  down  to  what  he  secretly  despises  ; 
they  not  only  tyrannize  over  what  he  does,  but  mingle  a 
venom  with  what  he  thinks,  and  give  rise  to  the  whole  brood 
of  selfish  hates  and  greeds, — strife,  envy,  jealousy,  suspicious- 
ness, revenge  ;  t  so  that,  from  the  hot-bed  of  aag^  the  taint 
universally  spreads,  and  covers  the  whole  surface  of  life  with 
a  rank  growth  of  poison-plants.  Before  a  being  thus  con- 
structed the  Divine  Will  itself  is  exhibited  in  vain ;  it  may 
excite  wonder  at  the  spectacle  of  its  beauty,  and  awaken 
thirst  by  its  refreshing  flow :  but  it  leaves  him  on  the  ground, 
hopeless  to  follow  the  beckonmg  light,  or  to  cool  his  lips  at 
the  regenerative  stream. 

As  this  fatal  defect  lies  in  the  material  itself  of  the  human 
body,  it  was  inherent  no  less  in  the  first  man  than  in  his 
descendants,  and  was  as  truly  "  original  sin  "  in  him  as  in 
them  ;  being  in  fact  the  cause,  and  not  the  effect,  of  his 
transgression.  Else,  if  set  up  as  a  spiritual  being,  how  could 
he  fall  before  the  first  temptation  ?  Neither  in  the  Hebrew 
story,  nor  in  Paul's  application  of  it,  is  there  the  slightest 
hint  of  any  change  in  the  composition  of  Adam's  person,  by 
a  metamorphosis  of  it  into  flesh,  on  his  expulsion  from 
Paradise.  He  is  expressly  treated  as  "  made  of  the  earth, 
•earthy,"  to  be  the  founder  of  an  "  earthy  "  race ;  so  that  his 
Tra^diiiiGig  was  but  the  outcome  in  him  of  the  ajuapria  inherent 
in  his  kind,  and  transmitted  to  his  offspring  nothing  (beyond 
a  first  example)  which  he  had  not  himself  received.  The  uni- 
versal sinfulness  of  mankind  is  never  referred  to  the  fall  of 
Adam,  as  it  his  act  could  be  also  theirs,  either  really,  because 
they  were  in  germ  within  his  person,  or  by  "imputation," 
because  he  was  the  representative  sample  that  stood  for  them 
all.  These  ideas,  the  one  Jewish,  the  other  Augustinian,  are 
quite  foreign  to  the  Pauline  anthropology,  and  are  only  futile 
apologies  for  the  paradoxical  but  actual  conception  of  uncon- 
scious sin  as  an  attribute  of  organized  matter.  The  apostle 
is  not  content  with  assuming  this  conception  as  an  admissible 
premiss  of  his  reasoning;  to  vindicate  the  stress  which  he 

*  Kom.  vii.  17,  22,  23.  t  See  Gal.  v.  19. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         -jZj 

lays  upon  it,  he  supplies  it  with  a  special  proof,  which  runs 
thus :  in  the  human  sphere,  Death  is  linked  to  Sin  as  an 
inseparable  appendage,  and  so,  wherever  it  appears,  it  is  a 
sure  mark  of  Sin.  Death  visited  all  the  generations  between 
Adam  and  Moses :  therefore.  Sin  was  universal  throughout. 
But  transf/yessiou  there  was  none  ;  for  outside  the  gates  of 
Paradise  no  Divine  commands  were  given  till  the  Law  was 
delivered  from  Sinai ;  nor  could  there  be  any  imputation  of 
Adam's  transgression  :  "  for  where  there  is  no  law,  sin  is  not 
imputed."  The  sin,  therefore,  was  personal  to  each,  yet  was 
disobedience  in  none ;  and  was  simply  the  same  sway  of 
natural  impulse  that  had  play  in  Adam,  while  yet  untempted, 
and  floating  on  the  eddies  of  an  epithumetic  nature.* 

According  to  this  unquestionable  purport  of  the  apostolic 
reasoning,  Adam's  certainty  of  afxaorla  and  subjection  to 
Death  were  provided  for  ah  initio  in  his  sarkical  constitution, 
and  were  only  evinced,  not  caused  by  his  trespass.  Yet  the 
immediate  context  curiously  verges  towa,rds  the  opposite 
account,  which  fastens  the  responsibility  for  the  facts  of  Sin 
and  Death  not  on  the  essential  nature,  but  on  the  historical 
act  of  Adam's  fall.  "Through  one  man,"  it  is  said,  "Sin 
entered  into  the  world,  and  death  through  sin,  and  so  death 
passed  unto  all  men,  for  that  all  sinned."  +  These  first  words 
seem  already  to  make  more  of  Adam's  agency  than  would  be 
due  to  it  if  regarded  as  merely  an  early  exemplification  of  a 
universal  constitution  :  jet,  if  no  more  were  said  we  might  per- 
haps read  in  them  only  this  meaning, — '  See  here  what  is  to  be 
expected  of  a  race  thus  carnally  constituted.'  But,  as  we  pass 
on,  we  find  the  stress  distinctly  limited  to  the  particular  act 
of  disobedience,  and  the  consequent  death  treated  as  its 
sentence  of  judicial  condemnation  :  "  by  the  trespass  of  one  " 
(not  by  the  constitution  of  all)  "  the  many  died  :  "  "  the 
judgment  came  of  one  unto  condemnation  :  "  "by  the  trespass 
of  the  one,  death  reigned  through  the  one :  "  "  through 
one  trespass  the  judgment  came  unto  all  men  to  condemna- 
tion :  "  "  through  one  man's  disobedience  the  many  were 
made  sinners."  And  this  involvement  of  all  in  the  lapse  of 
one  is  gendered  the  more  striking  by  the  parallel  provision  for 

*  Horn.  V.  13,  14..  ...  -  t  lb.  V.  12. 

c  c  2 


388  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

its  reversal  in  the  unique  obedience  of  Christ  which  brings 
acquittal  "  to  the  many,"  and  "  abundance  of  grac3  "  and  a 
"  righteousness  of  God."*  It  is  impossible  to  harmonize  the 
penal  institution  of  death  with  the  natural  necessity  of  sin  as 
its  cause  :  and  impossible  to  doubt  that  both  conceptions  co- 
existed in  the  mind  of  Paul.  They  are  fragments  of  two 
different  systems  of  thought,  both  indispensable  yet  never 
perhaps  entirely  unified ;  for  when  the  moral  convictions 
which  are  the  authoritative  interpreters  of  human  life  are 
carried  into  the  transcendent  sphere  of  the  divine  Infinitude, 
their  relative  characteristics  are  liable  to  be  swallowed  up  in 
the  stupendous  demands  of  absolute  Being.  The  apostle's 
intense  and  lofty  ethical  feeling  appropriated  the  national 
faith  in  the  holiness  of  God  and  His  righteous  government, 
and  applied  to  it  the  judicial  ideas  of  the  Pharisaic  school. 
When,  on  his  conversion,  the  universality  of  that  government 
burst  upon  his  view,  and  spi'ead  before  him  as  its  scene  and 
story,  instead  of  the  family  of  Israel,  the  groups  also  of 
Gentile  nations  in  their  march  through  all  the  ages,  the 
Divine  economy  became  so  vast  and  all-pervading  as  to  dwarf 
the  agency  of  man,  and  take  up  all  his  phenomena  into  the 
meshes  of  one  design,  now  hastening  to  its  consummation  :  so 
that  all  that  had  seemed  to  baffle  the  Providential  intent,  the 
Sin  of  man,  with  its  entail  of  Death,  the  multiplication  of 
offences  by  the  very  law  which  prohibited  them,  the  train  of 
hideous  or  beautiful  idolatries,  the  stoning  of  the  prophets,  the 
captivity  of  the  saints,  the  cross  of  Calvary,  the  persecution 
stopped  by  the  vision  on  the  Damascus  road,  were  all  of  the 
counsel  and  ordination  of  God,  leading  up  to  the  revelation  of 
Christ  in  heaven,  and  the  assimilation  to  that  second  Adam 
of  all  the  redeemed  who  would  throw  themselves  upon  the 
offered  power  of  His  spirit.  It  is  no  wonder  if  the  enthusiasm 
of  this  great  Theodicy  carried  its  author  too  lightly  over  the 
logical  joints  in  its  structure. 

However  obscure  may  be  the  inseparable  linking  together 
of  Sin  and  Death  in  the  apostle's  thought,  one  thing,  most 
needful  to  his  interpreter,  is  clear,  yet  apt  to  escape  attention  ; 
viz.   that   to   him   the   word   Death   denoted   not    the  mere 

*  Rom.  V.  15-21.- 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        389 

dissolution  of  the  bodily  organism  into  its  elements,  but  the 
consignment  of  the  ^i'.\j?  to  the  caverns  of  an  underworld, 
either  never  to  return  into  the  sunshine,  or  to  await  IMessiah's 
recall  of  his  elect  to  share  his  reign  on  earth,  while  all  the 
rest  were  exiled  to  the  nadir  furthest  from  him.  This  dim 
psychical  continuance  was  as  much  a  part  of  the  conception 
of  death  as  the  decomposition  of  the  flesh  :  it  lingered  behind 
as  a  faint  penumbra  of  a  consciousness  that  had  passed,  and 
the  reserved  possibility  of  one  that  might  be  yet  to  come  ; 
but  was  just  as  much  the  privation  of  spiritual  life  as  the 
mere  T^u\»f  of  man  is  alien  to  the  irvevixa  of  God.  Heaven 
alone  is  the  realm  of  Spirit  in  its  divine  essence  and  life-giving 
power  :  the  earth  and  the  vaults  which  it  hides  are  peopled  by 
sarkical  natures  and  their  ghosts ;  and  nothing  can  cross 
these  confines  of  death  into  the  living  light,  unless  caught  up 
by  the  immediate  Spirit  of  God,  or  lifted  by  the  attracting  love 
of  a  Christ, — the  image  and  the  medium  of  His  perfection. 
Since  Sin  and  Death  are  the  inherent  accompaniments  of 
the  human  organism,  they  are  the  impartial  doom  of  Adam 
and  all  his  race,  from  which  no  device  can  save  them  which 
leaves  them  "  in  the  flesh  "  at  all.  Will  the  apostle, — him- 
self "  a  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews," — dare  to  proclaim  this  to 
his  fellow-citizens  of  "  the  chosen  people,"  "  the  holy  nation," 
so  self-assured  of  being  the  favourites  of  heaven  ?  Have  they 
not  been  divinely  organized  under  a  revealed  Law,  to  be 
disciplined  in  righteousness  and  made  well-pleasing  in  the 
sight  of  God  '?  '  Yes,'  is  his  reply  :  '  and  so  have  the  Gentiles 
in  their  secret  thought,  "  clearly  seen  "  "  what  majOje  known 
of  God,"  and  received  his  "  law  written  in  their  hearts  :  "  but 
neither  the  tablet  of  stone,  nor  the  invisible  hand-writing  on 
the  conscience,  has  been  obeyed  :  both  have  been  shamelessly 
violated,  and  left  Jew  and  Pagan  alike  exposed  to  righteous 
condemnation  from  Him  who  "  judgeth  the  secrets  of  men."  '* 
Thus,  the  Pauline  universality  ])egins  with  the  universality  of 
Sin,  and  flies  directly  in  the  face  of  Israel's  pride  of  spiritual 
primogeniture.  Nor  is  this  all :  a  shock  more  startling 
follows  :  He  who  bowed  the  heavens  to  throw  His  voice  from 
Smai  gave  indeed  a  Law  intensely  holy,  just,   and  good  :  but 

*  Eom.  i.  18-29. 


390  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

instead  of  being  meant  to  make  a  people  holy,  just,  and  good, 
it  was  intended  to  demonstrate  its  own  futility  for  this  end  : — 
nay,  its  own  inevitable  tendency  to  multiply  transgressions  by 
suggesting  temptations  that  else  would  sleep.  "  The  La^Y 
entered,  that  the  offence  might  abound."*  "  I  had  not  known 
sin,  except  through  the  law  ;  for  I  had  not  known  coveting 
except  the  law  had  said  '  Thou  shalt  not  covet :  '  but  sin, 
finding  occasion,  wrought  in  me  all  manner  of  coveting :  for, 
apart  from  the  lav\',  sin  is  dead."t  In  short,  we  are  for  ever 
haunted  by  the  dream  of  a  righteousness  which  we  are 
radically  incapable  of  realizing.  The  commandments  do  but 
clear  and  brighten  the  dream,  and  leave  the  nightmare  on  the 
rigid  and  writhing  will  more  dreadful  than  before  :  for  precept 
deepens  the  consciousness,  without  conferring  the  power  of 
good :  nay,  by  letting  in  the  moral  light  among  instincts  once 
free  and  unquestioned,  it  casts  the  shadows  of  guilt  on  many 
a  track  undarkened  by  them  before.  Something  more  is 
wanted  with  the  paralytic  will,  than  to  tell  it  whither  to  go 
and  bid  it  "  rise  up  and  walk  !  "  It  can  only  answer  with  a 
groan,  and  turn  to  the  wall  to  hide  its  tears.  The  appeal  to 
the  personal  consciousness  thus  confirms  the  witiless  of  history 
by  which  the  apostle  proves  the  inefficacy  of  Law,  either  natural 
or  specially  revealed,  for  forming  a  righteous  humanity,  at 
one  with  the  holiness  of  God  :  in  the  mind  of  a  carnal  race  it 
can  only  implant  a  baffled  idea,  overpowered  by  the  tyranny 
of  impulse.  And  the  whole  object  of  the  world's  Providence 
thus  far  has  been  to  convince  mankind  of  their  sin,  and 
humble  them  to  the  verge  of  despair,  by  the  anguish  of 
conscience  and  the  wreck  of  law,  and  the  failure  of  every 
polity,  whether  human  or  divinely  lent  on  experiment,  in 
order  that  at  last  they  may  fling  their  self-reliance  away,  and 
lie  open  in  faith  to  the  promised  gift  of  a  new  righteousness 
from  heaven. 

But  is  not  that  an  incommunicable  gift  ?  who  can  be  found 
to  convey  across  the  worlds  a  living  grace  that  must  be  born 
within,  that  cannot  be  laid  as  a  crown  on  the  nature  already 
there,  but  only  grow  as  a  flower  from  a  root  which,  alas  !  it 
has  not  ?  For  want  of  this  it  is  that  the  light  and  air  of 
*  Rom.  V.  20.  t  Rom.  vii.  7,  S. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         391 

heaven  play  around  it  in  vain,  and  the  natural  mind  misses 
its  beauty  and  its  joy,  without  approaching  the  angels  except 
with  the  sense  of  exile.  Nothing  short  of  a  reconstitution  of 
humanity,  infusing  into  it  the  divine  principle  absent  from  it 
in  its  first  edition,  and  dissolving  or  neutralizing  its  carnal 
elements,  can  give  it  power  adequate  to  its  intelligence,  and 
lift  or  throw  off  the  dead  weight  that  holds  it  down.  And  as 
no  creature  can  reconstitute  itself,  this  is  a  deliverance  which 
can  only  come  by  supernatural  gift,  or  descend  from  some 
spiritual  Adam  on  a  new  race,  as  the  slavery  has  passed  on 
all  the  family  of  the  natural  Adam.  And  lo  !  this  is  just 
what  has  happened  to  Paul  himself  from  the  day  when  God 
"  revealed  his  Son  in  him,"  and  showed  him  how  the  crucified, 
though  fashioned  as  a  mortal  man,  was  in  essence  a  glorious 
spirit,  and  could  not  be  holden  of  death,  and  had  passed  not 
into  the  underworld  of  departed  souls,  but  into  the  home  of 
God  as  the  first-fruits  of  a  pure  and  divine  humanity.  Ever 
since  that  kindling  vision,  and  the  commission  to  proclaim  it 
as  the  promissory  opening  of  holy  and  immortal  life  for  all, 
the  bonds  have  fallen  from  the  anxious  and  labouring  Pharisee, 
and  he  "can  do  all  things  through  Christ  who  strengtheneth 
him  :"  he  has  received  "the  spirit  of  adoption,"  that  brings 
him  to  God  as  a  Father,  and  makes  him  one  with  the  beloved 
Son,  with  whom  he  has  died  to  the  burden  and  power  of  sin, 
and  risen  to  the  new  life  of  faith  and  love.  Carried  out  of 
himself  by  the  enthusiasm  of  a  heavenly  affection,  and  finding 
his  saddest  problem  solved,  not  b}'  his  will,  but  by  the  "  Spirit 
of  God  that  dwelleth  hi  him,"  he  has  in  his  own  experience 
the  true  key  to  the  enigma  of  the  world's  Providence.  First 
were  the  resources  of  the  flesh,  with  their  desu'es,  activities 
and  intelligence,  to  be  instituted  and  tested  by  full  develop- 
ment :  and  when  their  creaturely  pride  had  been  brought  low 
by  their  story  of  failure,  sorrow,  and  death,  the  secret  should 
be  revealed  that  man  is  meant  to  belong  to  the  Divine  and 
not  to  the  animal  realm,  that  his  essence  is  akin  to  that  of 
God  :  and  at  this  crisis  an  economy  of  Spirit  is  to  enter  and 
be  administered  bv  an  ideal  or  heavenlv  man,  who  shall  effect 
the  transition  l)y  bearing  the  flesh  that  with  him  it  may  die 
aaid  its  contents  perish,  and  yet  living  in  the  spirit  and  re- 


392  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

turning  to  its  source  that  he  may  send  it  into  the  heart  of  his 
brethren  still  "travailing  in  pain"  and  "waiting  for  the 
redemption  of  their  body."  The  new  era  is  now  opening  :  the 
sonship  to  Adam  is  succeeded  by  the  sonship  to  God,  through 
the  agency  of  one  who  united  both  and  took  the  sorrow  of  the 
one  to  inaugurate  the  glories  of  the  other.  By  what  method, 
in  the  Apostle's  view,  this  Mediator  accomplished  the  transi- 
tion, how  he  so  cleared  away  the  accumulated  failures  of  the 
past,  as  for  the  future  to  free  the  track  of  spiritual  righteous- 
ness between  heaven  and  earth,  must  be  reserved  for  consid- 
eration till  we  treat  of  the  doctrine  of  Redemption.  The  one 
indispensable  condition  with  which  at  present  we  have  to  do 
is  the  Humano-Divine  personality  that  spans  the  interval 
between  the  two  periods,  that  knows  to  the  uttermost  the 
experiences  of  both,  and  shows  the  way  through  the  most 
pathetic  shadows  into  the  eternal  light. 

Though  in  the  world's  history  the  periods  of  the  carnal  and 
the  spiritual  Adam  were  successive,  not  so  was  the  existence 
of  their  heads.  The  revelation  indeed  of  the  second,  and  his 
entrance  upon  his  term  of  LordsJiij)  Iv  cwufui,  were  reserved 
till  the  term  of  the  first  was  aj^pointed  to  end.  But,  for  all 
that,  he  must  have  been  "  ready  to  be  revealed  in  the  last 
time  :"  for  spirit,  "  the  spirit  of  holiness,"  being  an  efHux  of 
the  essence  of  God,  is  not  put  together  and  moulded  into  this 
or  that  creature,  like  "  flesh  :"  and  as  soon  as  the  apostle 
came  into  communion  with  the  heavenly  Christ,  clothed  with 
immortality,  he  knew  more  than  the  future  function  of  this 
Son  of  God  :  his  exaltation  reflected  back  a  light  upon  his 
past,  and  made  it  impossible  to  think  of  him  as  now,  or  within 
his  human  span,  first  beginning  to  be.  Hir:  pre-existence 
therefore  is  undoubtedly  implied  throughout  even  the  Pauline 
letters  which  find  no  occasion  to  give  it  direct  expression  : 
could  the  birthday  of  a  new  human  being  be  announced,  for 
instance,  in  these  terms,  "  When  the  fulness  of  time  was  come, 
God  sent  forth  his  Son,  born  of  a  woman,  born  under  the  law, 
that  he  might  redeem  them  that  were  under  the  law."*  Or, 
again,  thus,  "  God,  sending  his  own  Son  in  the  likeness  of 
sinful  flesh,  and  for  sin,  condemned  sin  in  the  flesh." t     One 

■"  Gal.  iv.  4,  5.  f  Eoni.  viii.  3. 


Chip.  II.]       THEORIES   OF  THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.        593 

^Yho  is  "sent"  is  presumed  to  be  there  in  readiness  for  the 
mission  ;  and  the  predicates  enumerated,  his  being  made  of 
flesh,  and  having  a  mother,  and  being  under  the  law,  might 
be  taken  for  granted  of  a  Palestinian  Jew,  and  would  not  be 
specified  except  of  one  to  whose  nature  they  did  not  properly 
or  necessarily  belong.  Such  language  is  applicable  only  to  a 
spiritual  being,  passing  into  the  conditions  of  an  incarnate  life. 
If  more  unmistakable  statements  are  required,  they  are  sup- 
plied by  passages  in  which  the  appearance  of  Jesus  on  earth, 
instead  of  being  referred  to  the  grace  of  God,  is  described  as 
his  own  voluntary  act :  "Ye  know  the  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  that,  though  he  was  rich,  yet  for  your  sakes  he  became 
poor,  that  ye  through  his  poverty  might  become  rich  :"*  and, 
still  more  explicitly  when  the  acceptance  of  the  human  life  is 
set  forth  as  the  ideal  of  humilitv  :  "  Have  this  mind  in  you, 
which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus ;  who,  being  in  the  form  of 
God,  counted  it  not  a  prize  to  be  on  an  equality  with  God,  but 
emptied  himself,  taking  the  form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in 
the  likeness  of  men  ;  and  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he 
humbled  himself,  becoming  obedient  even  unto  death,  yea,  the 
death  of  the  cross." t 

Except  as  presupposed  in  his  incarnation,  sacrifice,  and 
resurrection  to  immortal  life,  Christ's  pre-existence  is  left 
almost  a  blank  in  the  Pauline  theology.  One  brief  allusion 
shows  that  he  was  regarded  as  the  divine  Agent  in  shaping 
the  history  of  Israel ;  for  he  is  identified  with  the  rock- 
fountain  which  assuaged  the  people's  thirst,  and  was  tradi- 
tionally reputed  to  have  accompanied  them  through  their 
desert  wanderings;  "which  rock  is  Christ."!  Other  words 
are  found  which  seem  to  assign  him  even  an  instrumentality 
in  the  creation  of  the  world;  "to  us  there  is  one  God  the 
Father,  of  Avhom  are  all  things,  and  we  unto  him  ;  and  one 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  through  whom  are  all  tilings,  and  we 
through  him."§  The  "all  things"  here  mentioned  refer, 
however,  not  to  the  objects  constituting  the  universe,  but  to 
the  current  Providential  courses  of  human  aftairs  :  as  the 
antithesis,  in  the  context,  to  the  "  Gods  many  and  Lords 
many "    of  the   heathen   clearly  shows  ;    for   their  supposed 

*  2  Cor.  viii.  9.  t  Phil.  ii.  5-8.  %  1  Cor.  x.  4.  g  lb.  viii.  6. 


394  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

function  was  not  creative,  but  only  interventive.  It  would 
not  have  been  in  character  for  the  apostle,  as  "  a  Hebrew  of 
the  Hebrews,"  to  trench  upon  the  undivided  prerogative  of 
Him  "  who  alone  stretched  out  the  heavens,  and  treadeth 
upon  the  waves  of  the  sea,  who  maketh  the  Bear,  Orion  and 
the  Pleiades,  and  the  chambers  of  th€  South."*  But  the 
subordinate  agency  attributed  to  the  pre-existent  Christ  in 
the  national  history  and  in  the  voluntary  descent  into  the 
humiliations  of  mortal  life,  can  belong  only  to  a  being  con- 
ceived as  'personal,  and  therefore  forbids  us  to  interpret  the 
personality  as  due  to  the  incarnation  and  limited  to  the 
contents  of  the  human  nature.  The  subtle  questions  after- 
wards raised  respecting  the  relation  between  the  heavenly  and 
the  earthly  factors  of  the  suffering  Redeemer,  whether  he 
had  a  compound  personality,  made  of  a  Divine  will  and  a 
human  soul,  and  how  in  that  case  the  two  consciousnesses 
were  adjusted  into  the  needful  unity,  never  emerge  in  the 
apostle's  letters,  and  doubtless  were  foreign  to  his  thought. 
The  general  tendency  of  his  treatment  is  to  identify  the 
active  affections  and  determining  energies  of  the  character 
with  the  spiritual  personality  brought  from  heaven  and 
returning  thither,  while  charging  on  the  incarnation  the 
passive  sufferings,  the  moral  conflicts,  and  the  sympathetic 
sorrows,  inseparable  from  the  human  lot.  This  was  probably 
roughly  conceived  as  the  planting  of  a  personal  divine  essence 
in  a  sarkical  organism  :  the  susceptibilities  and  l-Ki^vn'iaq  of 
the  latter  being  subjected  to  the  authoritative  hegemony  of 
the  former. 

It  has  indeed  been  inferred,  from  the  expression  "  God 
sent  his  own  Son  in  the  likeness  {ojuoicoina)  of  sinful  flesh," 
that  the  corporeal  material  of  the  incarnate  Christ  was  some- 
thing otJier  than  the  '  sinful  flesh  '  of  mankind,  the  imitation 
being  not  homogeneous,  but  only  homoeogeneous  with  the 
original,  t  But  though  this  interpretation,  essentially  Docetic, 
is  the  first  which  the  language  of  "likeness  "  would  suggest, 
it  involves  the  apostle's  doctrine  in  a  contradiction  to  which 

*  Job  ix.  8,  9. 

t  F.  Chr.  Baur,  Theol.  Jahrblicher,  1857.  S.  106,  scqq.,  and  Vorlesungeu 
lib.  N.  T.  Theologie.  S.  190  sfgg.,  and  Das  Christeuthum  und  die  Ch,  Ivirche. 
I.  S.  285,  1"=  Ed.,  310,  2-''^  Ed. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        395 

he  could  hardly  have  remained  insensil^le  ;  for  if  it  was  not 
the  <Taps  a/iapTiag  that  suffered  on  the  cross,  the  sin  and 
death  of  man  was  not,  as  he  affirms,  carried  off  and  annulled 
in  that  sacrifice  ;  and  there  is  the  less  need,  on  exegetical 
grounds,  to  run  into  this  contradiction  because,  although 
homogeneity  is  not  im])Ued  by  likeness,  neither  is  it  excluded : 
an  exact  copy,  or  reduction,  identical  in  attributes,  being  also 
a  facsimile.* 

In  "the  heavenly  vision  "  then  of  the  glorified  Son  of  God, 
there  burst  upon  the  view  of  Paul  not  the  Galilean  prophet 
taken  into  retreat  till  he  could  fulfil  the  prophecies,  but  God's 
own  idea  as  originally  projected  in  spirit,  of  what  man  was  to 
be ;  a  nature  already  divinely  constituted  in  the  invisible 
world  when  the  earthly  Adam  was  set  up  to  institute  his  poor 
terrestrial  copy.  But  if  the  second  Adam  thus  co-existed 
with  the  first,  it  was  not  in  active  plenitude  so  much  as  m 
latent  possibility,  ready  to  declare  its  contents  in  the  fulness 
of  time.  He  was  there,  among  God's  eternal  stores,  like 
"the  true  tabernacle"  in  heaven,  "the  pattern  shown  to 
Moses  on  the  mount, "f  of  what  was  yet  to  l)e  for  the 
worshippers'  courts  below,  till  they  also  passed  "  behind  the 
veil "  above.  For  the  apostle,  himself  not  called  till  the 
prelude  was  over  and  the  irk^owfia  had  come,  all  the  interest 
was  concentrated  in  the  realization :  the  cross  was  the 
prologue,  the  surrender  of  "the  kingdom"  to  God,  as  all  in 
all,  was  the  consummation,  the  communion  and  assimilation 
between  the  Son  of  God  above  and  the  adopted  sons  below, 
made  up  the  intermediate  acts  of  his  divine  drama  of  redeemed 
humanity.  Hence  in  his  love  of  Christ  there  was  nothing  re- 
trospective, no  personal  image,  no  memory  of  moving  incidents 
and  startling  words,  no  regret  even  that  he  had  missed  all 
contact  with  that  sacred  life.  Its  whole  story  is  compressed 
for  him  into  a  single  conception,  of  a  god-like  human  person, 
passing  himself  through  the  darkest  conditions  of  earthlj 
experience,  that,  on  emerging,  he  may  bear  off"  to  heaven  in  his 
train  all  of  his  race  that  will  trust  and  follow  him.  This  one 
act,  at  once  lowliest  and  most  transcendent,  is  so  all-sufficing 

*  See  this  well  argued  iu   HolstcD,  zum  Evaugclium   d.   Paulus  iind  d. 
Petrus,  p.  439.  t  Hcb.  viii.  2,  5. 


396  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

for  the  apostle  that,  with  his  immediate  knowledge  of  it,  he 
feels  no  want  of  the  particular  experiences  of  the  earlier 
apostles  in  their  attendance  upon  the  ministry  of  Jesus :  to 
have  known  him  as  "  the  Son  of  David,"  as  born  at  Beth- 
lehem, as  duly  registered  under  the  law,  as  in  conflict  with 
scribes  and  Pharisees,  and  with  tempters  worse  than  they, 
is  but  familiarity  with  the  detail  of  his  incarnation, — a 
'^I'^vwcsKiiv  Kara  aaoKa  yoimov, — such  matters  of  biographical 
concern  for  a  person  defined  by  the  national,  family,  in- 
dividual incidents  of  his  earthly  lot,  vanish  from  the  fore- 
ground, where  behind  them  the  glory  of  a  heavenly  essence  is 
kindled,  and  draws  the  eye  to  their  only  meaning :  one  to 
whom  it  is  revealed  that  Christ  has  died  and  lives  in  heaven 
for  all,  knows  him  Kara  Trvivfxa,  and  knows  him  no  more  Kara 
ffaoKa. 

Thus  it  was  that,  from  the  hour  of  his  conversion,  the 
Apostle  of  the  Gentiles  consciously  stood  in  an  immediate- 
relation  with  the  glorified  Son  of  God,t  his  commissioned 
servant  in  the  winding  up  of  the  long  design  of  history  ;  and, 
impelled  forwards  by  the  inspiration  of  that  trust,  set  little 
store  by  the  past,  whether  national  or  personal,  which  had 
done  its  work  and  shown  that  it  was  there  chiefly  in  order  to 
be  humbled  and  transcended.  Thus  it  was  that  when  called 
to  serve,  not  the  Messiah  of  Israel,  but  God's  living  ideal  of 
humanity,  he  cared  not  to  "confer  with  flesh  and  blood,"  and 
learn  his  lesson  from  those  who  were  a^DOstles  before  him,  but 
retired  into  Arabia,!  to  conform  his  startled  thought  and 
affections  to  the  scale  of  the  universal  gospel,  and  the  deeper 
insight  of  the  Spirit.  The  companions  of  Jesus,  "  the  Son  cf 
David,"  in  his  journeyings,  could  "  add  nothing  unto  him  :  "§ 
they  had  seen  the  mortal  form ;  had  he  not  seen  the  immortal 
Christ?;]  The  incarnate  life  belongs  also  to  the  past,  like 
Israel's  prophecy,  and  was  all  summed  up  in  the  cross  and 
the  resurrection,  which   established    the  present  open   com- 

*  2  Cor.  vi.  15,  16,  i.e.,  "  in  his  Sarkical  character,"  e.g.,  as  Son  of  David: 
had  it  been  Kara  ttjv  aapKu,  the  meaning  would  have  been  "in  ;)^^/ fleshly 
character,"  e.g.,  with  my  bodily  eyes  :  for,  with  a  similar  arrangement  of  the 
words,  the  article  usually  appropriates  the  flesh  to  the  Subject,  not  to  the 
.Object. 

t  Gal.  i.  11,  12.  Jib.  i.  16,  17.  ^Ib.ii.  6.  ||  1  Cor.  ix.  1. 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES  OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        ^f^-j 

munion    between    the   saints    on   earth    and    the    home    in 
heaven. 

The  full  significance  of  this  variation  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
earlier  disciples  will  become  more  evident  after  treating  the 
Pauline  interpretation  of  the  cross.  Meanwhile,  one  feature 
which  goes  deep  into  it  is  already  evident.  The  identifica- 
tion of  Jesus  with  Messiah  by  his  original  followers,  lifted  him 
into  an  indefinite  distance  from  them,  as  their  king,  hid  for 
awhile  among  the  host  of  heaven,  but  coming  back  on  the 
clouds  with  power  and  great  glory  to  gather  his  elect,  indeed, 
under  his  beneficent  sway,  but  to  rule  the  nations  with  a  rod 
of  iron.  A  few  "  who  had  been  with  him  in  his  temptations  " 
might  be  in  office  under  him,  with  functions  of  delegated 
judgment  :  but  the  multitude  were  to  be  subjects  under 
sovereignty,  he  on  the  throne,  they  at  the  footstool ;  the 
majesty  to  l)e  his,  the  obedience  theirs.  Though  human  in 
his  first  experience,  he  had  been  invested  with  the  supernatural 
prerogatives  of  a  god.  Here,  an  original  community  of  nature 
is  practically  lost  by  a  miraculous  leap  of  exaltation,  amount- 
ing to  virtual  apotheosis.  Paul,  on  the  other  hand,  instead 
of  identifying  an  individual  man  with  Messiah,  identifies 
Messiah  with  the  spiritual  essence  of  ideal  humanity  ;  so  that 
all  through,  he  is  what  man  is  meant  to  be  ;  and,  to  bring  it 
to  pass  in  spite  of  baflling  failures,  takes  all  the  hindrances 
upon  himself,  and  having  made  them  null,  returns  to  heaven 
as  the  spiritual  Adam,  made  perfect  through  suftering,  and 
henceforth  drawing  all  men  into  his  likeness  by  the  quicken- 
ing affinity  of  his  spirit.  In  the  Palestinian  gospel  he  begins 
from  a  level  indistinguishable  from  that  of  his  disciples, 
limited  to  the  same  nature  and  the  same  nation,  but  is 
promoted,  without  change  of  either,  to  an  unap]iroachable 
elevation  of  rank.  In  the  Pauline,  he  lives  at  Ih-st  among 
heavenly  natures,  to  which  the  children  of  the  earthh'  Adam 
could  only  distantly  look  up  ;  but  only  to  show,  by  change  of 
form  to  theirs,  that  they  may  change  to  his,  and  to  plant  them 
consciously  on  the  same  plane  of  being,  as  one  family  in  God. 
The  one  induces  the  dependence  of  willing  obedience  :  the 
other  inspires  the  blending  enthusiasm  of  divine  affections. 

In  this  latter  aspect  of  his  being,   Christ,  whether  in  his 


3g8  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

heavenly  or  in  his  earthly  life,  is  no  mere  individnal.  He  is  a 
representative  personality  at  the  junction  of  two  ages  ; — the 
suffering  medium  in  whom  the  miseries  of  the  one  expire  ;  the 
divine  energy  from  whom  flows  the  free  and  glorious  life  into 
the  other.  He  stood  for  mankind,  as  children  of  Adam,  below  ; 
stood  in  the  flesh  which  was  foreign  to  his  original  self,  and 
died  in  it,  that  God  might  condemn  it  and  have  done  with  it, 
and  let  the  spiritual  essence  emerge  from  it  to  its  native  home. 
He  stands  for  mankind,  as  sons  of  God,  above ;  to  dispense 
among  them,  by  the  awakening  affinities  of  faith  and  love, 
the  power  of  the  Spirit  which  henceforth  is  to  make  all  akin 
and  form  one  family  in  earth  and  heaven.  Of  this  new  family, 
not  gathered  by  lineage  or  lying  as  a  clan  between  the  river 
and  the  sea,  but  linked  to  each  other  by  the  invisible  sym- 
pathies of  pure  affection,  and  to  God  by  the  trust  and  aspir- 
ation of  them  all,  he  is  the  founder  and  head  :  the  "  Spirit  of 
holiness  "  is  the  common  element  of  life  for  them  and  him,  as 
it  has  been  eternally  the  perfection  of  the  heavenly  Father 
himself. 

In  this  Pauline  doctrine  we  have  the  second  form  of  the 
Christian  theory  respecting  the  person  of  Messiah  ;  separated 
by  a  vast  interval  from  the  first ;  and  remaining,  to  this  hour, 
the  depository  and  monument  of  some  of  the  deepest  truths 
and  most  awakening  influences  of  religion.  Whatever  the 
historic  and  logical  critic  may  have  to  say  of  its  technical 
form,  of  the  adequacy  of  its  premisses,  the  security  of  its 
reasoning,  and  its  selection  and  application  of  historical 
analogies,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  the  grandeur  of  its  main 
conception,  or  the  depth  of  insight  and  pure  passion  of 
aspiration  with  which,  when  once  free  from  the  tangle  of 
its  dialectics,  it  rushes  upon  its  sublime  conclusions.  It 
resolutely  makes  over  to  humanity  at  large  whatever  was 
glorious  and  divine  in  the  personality  of  Christ,  and  claims 
for  all  a  participation  in  the  spirit  of  his  heavenly  life.  It 
vindicates  the  marvellous  power  of  a  free  faith  and  trustful 
love  to  transcend  the  achievements  of  the  labouring  will,  and 
to  give  at  once  atmosphere  and  wings  to  the  spirit  in  its 
upward  ascent.  And  it  carries  in  it  the  principle  which  lies 
beneath  all  the  communion  of    souls,  that  minds,  wherever 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         399 

placed,  and  however  ranked,  are  blended  into  one  kind  by  the 
divine  element  of  all,  living  upon  the  same  truth,  owning  the 
same  righteousness,  thrilled  with  the  same  affections,  and 
folded  within  the  same  eternal  love. 


§  4.  As^'tU  Wordr      . 
A.  The  Alexandrine  Logon. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  appreciate  the  change  of  intellectual 
climate  which  every  reader  feels  on  entering  upon  the  fourth 
Gospel,  without  adverting  to  the  contrasted  position  of  the 
Israelites  at  home  and  their  settlers  abroad.  In  the  religion 
of  the  two,  nominally  the  same,  the  fixed  and  fluid  elements 
were  curiously  different.  The  monotheism  which  both  of 
them  inherited  was  in  its  origin  a  privilege  of  race,  an  ignor- 
ing of  "  strange  gods,"  and  undivided  loyalty  to  Jehovah,  as 
the  divine  Guardian  of  their  fathers  and  their  tribes  ;  and  by 
slow  degrees  alone  did  the  national  God  become,  not  only  the 
greatest  but  the  only  one.  Thus  revealed  to  them  as  author 
and  director  of  their  family  drama,  he  was  traced  chiefly  m 
its  vicissitudes,  as  for  ever  weaving  the  pattern  of  history, 
and  mingling  with  human  affairs  as  the  field  of  his  living 
will.  His  agency  moved  through  Time  as  its  scene,  and 
worked  out  the  idea  of  Man  as  its  central  object,  intending  to 
realize  its  aim  in  a  society  brought  at  last  to  complete  right- 
eousness. In  this  faith  the  dominant  ideas  are  given  in  the 
One  Piighteous  Will,  evolvmg  through  the  ages  the  type  of 
perfected  Humanity,  reflecting  the  Divine.  They  are  the 
measure  of  every  value  in  the  universe  ;  the  heavens  and  the 
earth,  with  all  their  contents,  are  but  the  theatre  on  which 
their  denouement  is  wrought  out ;  and  whoever  and  whatever 
is  too  intractable  to  subserve  the  end  will  have  to  perish.  On 
this  mode  of  thought,  founded  in  the  conception  of  a  Moral 
Government,  the  Palestinian  Jew  retained  an  unrelenting 
hold.  He  could  let  the  cosmos  burn  and  go  out  like  a 
firework  in  the  night,*  and  see  "  the  armies  of  heaven  "  wade 
in  blood  even  unto  the  bridles  of  the  horses,  •!■  and  "  the  false 

•  2  Pet.  iii.  10.      •      •        •       •  t  Kev.  xi\:  20. 


400  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

prophet  and  them  thcat  worshipped  the  image  "   "  cast  alive 
into  the  lake  of  fire,"*  and  all  would  be  right,   if  only  God 
were  just  and  true  to  his  promise.     That  promise  was  of  a 
final  kingdom  of  righteousness,  a  heavenly  Jerusalem,  where 
nothing  that  defileth  should  ever  enter,  and  for  the  glory  of 
which  the  doom  of  mj-riads  would  not  pay  too  dear.     This 
national  vision  the  apostle  Paul  also  shared  and  cherished, 
but,   carrying  it  with  him  into  an  Hellenic  city,  found  its 
limits  intolerable  and  its  sacrifices  too  great.     He  could  not 
part  off  the  fellow-citizens  greeting    him  in  the  streets   of 
Tarsus  into  the  eternal  light  and  the  outer  darkness  :  he  was 
tempted  to  feel  that,  of  the  two,  he  would  rather  consort  for 
ever  with  this  young  heathen  poet  than  with  that  priggish 
Hebrew  scribe,  and  would  save  the  wrong  one,  if  it  were  left 
to  him.     The  working  of  such  thoughts  incessantly  chafed 
away  for  him  the  hard  lines  of  national  election,  and  supplied 
an  interpretation  of  the  Law  and  Prophets  of  his  people  which 
universalized  the  hope  of  Israel,  by  ti'ansferring  its  conditions 
from  the  flesh  to  the  spirit.     This  expansion  made  him  the 
Apostle  of  the  Gentiles ;  but,   except  in  the  widening  of  his 
panorama  of  salvation,  it  left  him  still,  in  his  whole  cast  of 
thought,  a  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews  ;  with  a  Messiah  who  was 
indeed  no  stranger  in  heaven,  yet  only  such  an  image  of  God 
as  Adam  ought  to  have  been  ;  with  a  Law  which,  though  no 
longer  binding,  had  never  been  repealed,  but  came  to  an  end 
by  using  its  received  provisions  for  its  own  release ;  with  an 
eschatology  which  would  bring  back  Christ  to  this  world  for 
judgment  at  the  last  assize,  and  for  union  with  his  disciples 
of  the  living  and  the  dead,  to  be  for  ever  with  them  till  he 
surrendered  all  to  God.     To  the  last  as  to  the  first  of  the 
apostles,  the  whole  scenery  was  that  of  a  supernatural  drama, 
the  windmg  up  of  human  history,  in  which  all  the  agents, 
whether  on  earth  or  in  heaven,   are  distant  by  an  infinite 
dependence  from  the  One  eternal  and  invisible  Sj^irit  whose 
will  they  subserve  :  although  the  Messianic  personality,  fi'om 
the  great  part  it  plays  in  evolving  the  design,  is  lifted  "  above 
every  name,"  and  called  the  "  Son  of  God." 

For  the  Jews  of  the  dispersion,  natives  of  non- Semitic  lauds, 

*  Eev.  xix.  20. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES  OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        401 

this  cluster  of  ideas  lost  its  centre  of  cohesion,  and  from  time 
to  time  threw  off  large  portions,  especially  from  its  outer 
shell  of  local  and  political  conception,  retaining  at  last  little 
more  than  its  monotheistic  and  ethical  nucleus.  For  the  first 
two  generations  indeed  of  our  era,  while  some  semblance  of 
national  life  was  left  in  Palestine,  and  the  festivals  were  kept, 
and  the  smoke  of  the  sacrifice  ascended,  and  the  hierarchy 
stood,  and  the  sects  disputed,  and  the  synagogue  usages  re- 
mained, Jerusalem  might  still  be  as  sacred  to  the  far-off 
Hebrew  as  Mecca  to  the  Moslem  pilgrim  now,  and  his  dreams 
of  heaven  itself  might  be  but  dissolving  views  of  the  father- 
land from  Lebanon  to  Hebron.  But  when  alien  armies  had 
scattered  the  chosen  people,  had  confiscated  their  patrimony, 
and  made  their  law  of  no  effect ;  when  the  priesthood  had  no 
altar  and  the  Sanhedrim  passed  into  an  empty  name,  when 
over  the  temple  site  first  the  ploughshare  was  driven  and  then 
a  sanctuary  raised  to  Jupiter  Capitolinus,  when  Israel  became 
a  race  without  a  home,  their  sacred  books,  which  could  be 
carried  anywhere,  came  to  be  their  sole  inheritance ;  and  of 
these  a  large  proportion  fell  away  from  all  present  application, 
and  could  be  snatched  from  the  grip  of  a  "  dead  Past  "  only 
by  miracles  of  allegorical  resurrection.  A  religion  thus 
released  from  geographical  concentration  and  ritual  polity, 
and  embodied  only  in  the  literature  of  an  ideal  faith,  is  free 
to  seek  its  rest  and  growth  wherever  favouring  conditions  may 
be  found ;  and  it  may  well  be  that  the  lost  pre-eminence  of 
Zion  should  migrate  to  one  or  other  of  the  great  colonies 
which  attracted  Jewish  enterprise  and  culture.  On  the  delta 
of  the  Nile  the  Macedonian  conquests  had  provided  the  most 
tempting  of  these  foreign  seats,  by  appropriating  one-third  of 
their  memorial  city  of  Alexandria  to  Jewish  settlers  from 
Palestine  ;  and  curious  it  is  that  while  by  escape  from  Egypt 
Israel  consolidated  itself  into  a  nation,  by  return  thither  it 
melted  its  nationality  away,  and  gave  its  essence  forth  as  the 
spirit  of  a  universal  faith. 

Nothing  more  was  needed  for  so  great  a  change  than  a  pro- 
longed contact  with  Greek  civilization  and  the  gradual  inter- 
fusion of  Semitic  and  Hellenic  thought ;  and  in  Alexandria 
this  was  rendered  inevitable  by  the  mere  necessity  of  speak- 

D    D 


402'  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

ing,  writing,  and  reading  Greek ;  and  of  resorting  to  it,  not 
only  as  the  currency  of  daily  intercourse,  but  as  the  vehicle, 
through  the  translated  scriptures,  of  their  religious  ideas  to 
a  mixed  society  unacquainted  with  the  Hebrew  tongue.     The 
difference  between  the  genius  of  two  races  is  never  so  sensibly 
felt  as  in  the  attempt  to  lodge  the  conceptions  of  one  in  the 
words  of  the  other ;  nor  does  any  discipline  so  quickly  correct 
the  rude  crystallizations  of  concrete  thought  and  disenchant 
the  illusory  creations  of  abstract  thought.     The  Septuagint 
version  affords  abundant  evidence  of  the  shrinking   of  the 
Hellenized  Jew  from  the  strong  anthropomorphism   of    his 
sacred  books,  and  the  desire  to  soften  in  it  what  would  be 
repulsive  to  a  more  refined  people.     It  was  not  the  Greek 
pohjthcism  that  he  thus  sought  to  conciliate;  rather  would  he 
earn  a  better   right   to   denounce   it   by   sacrificing  a  semi- 
mythology  of  his  own.     It  was  the  Greek  ■philosophy,  afloat  in 
the  intellectual  air  of  Alexandria,  that,  in  certain  of  its  ideal 
terms  came  into  comparison  with  his  religion,  and  opened  to 
him  a  region  of  thought  undreamt  of  in  his  traditional  heaven. 
While  the  "  Gods  many  and  lords  many "  of  the  Gentiles, 
being  for   the   most   part  ancestral  and   national  divinities, 
patrons  of  only  those  who  had  the  same  fathers,  the  same 
heroes,  the  same  history,  were  discredited  and  dethroned  by 
the  merging  of  states  and  tribes  in  universal  empire,  and 
retired  to  the  Eoman  Pantheon  as  a  museum  of  Statuary  Art, 
there  arose  from  the  schools  of  Athens  a  philosophical  mono- 
theism  that   touched   the   very   minds    most  averse  to  the 
popular   superstitions ;    and   though   in  the    strife    of   rival 
theories  at  home  it  was  no  serious  power,  it  found  a  more 
genial  reception  in  Alexandria,  and  was  carried  with  enthu- 
siasm over  the  boundary  which  separates  metaphysics  from 
religion.     The   field   in  which   both   Platonists   and   Aristo- 
telians found  themselves  in  presence  of  the  Divine  was  not, 
as  with  the  Israelites,  the  field  of  Time  and  the  processes  of 
historical  development,  but  that  of  Space  and  cosmical  order 
spread  through  its  infinitude,  within  and  through  and  behind 
which  must  be  hid  the  Thought  of  its  thought,  the  Ideal  of  its 
beauty,  the  Goodness  of  its  good.     The  eternal  Eeason  which 
made  it  an  intellectual  system,  the  infinite  synthesis  which 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        403 

made  it  one,  the  insight  of  moral  proportion  and  harmony 
that  made  it  a  hierarchy  of  interdependent  affection  and 
noble  life, — these  are  what  we  mean,  or  should  mean,  when 
we  speak  of  God ;  who  is  therefore  the  indwelling  cause  and 
archetype  of  all  that  can  be  known  and  loved,  as  well  as  of 
the  knowledge  and  love  themselves.  This  idea  of  the  imma- 
nent Deity,  the  primal,  continuous  and  co-extensive  source  of 
Avhatever  exists  or  acts  in  the  universe  for  fair  and  excellent 
ends,  is  even  more  strictly  monotheistic  than  the  Israelitish 
conception  :  for  it  begins  from  the  notion  and  belief  of  unity, 
instead  of  ending  with  it :  it  is  there  for  the  sake  of  unifying 
the  indivisible  cosmos,  and  constitutes  the  very  formula  of  its 
inmost  essence.  The  Jewish  Jehovah,  on  the  other  hand, 
emerges  into  Oneness  onlj^  by  the  defeat  and  suppression  of 
rival  claims,  and  reigns  at  last  in  Imperial  sovereignty  over 
tributary  heathens,  whose  idols  have  been  driven  to  enlist 
among  the  demons  under  "  the  Prince  of  the  power  of  the 
air."  The  unity  of  a  national  god  can  hardly  be  called  a 
truth  at  all,  held  as  it  is  side  by  side  with  the  admission  of 
similar  foreign  gods.  It  can  only  hecomc  a  truth  if  persisted 
in  with  tenacious  loyalty  till  not  only  the  collateral  belief  has 
been  flung  away,  but  the  constitution  of  Man  and  Nature  has 
been  read  into  an  inseparable  whole,  permeated  by  One 
mind,  and  directed  to  harmonious  ends. 

That  the  Unity  had  reached  that  stage  in  the  Greek  philo- 
sophic thought  is  evidenced  by  one  very  simple  mark  in  the 
language  of  the  schools,  whether  of  the  Academy,  the  Lyceum, 
or  the  Stoa.  They  never  speak  of  "minds,"  though  habitually 
attributing  the  functions  of  reason  to  both  men  and  God. 
The  word  vovg  has  no  plural :  Intellect,  in  whatever  Subject 
manifested,  being  all  one,  just  as  a  truth  is  one  and  the  same 
in  however  many  persons'  consciousness  it  may  present  itself. 
All  the  particular  cognitions  are  unified  in  the  single  cognitum  ; 
and  thought  can  be  rightly  regarded  only  as  a  cosmical  ele- 
ment that  alights  upon  distributed  points  of  life  with  identical 
undulation,  as  Space  reveals  its  own  dimensions  by  carrying 
them  into  every  room.  The  animal  organism  of  man 
was  not  more  intimately  dependent  fur  its  vitality  on  the 
material  products  of  the  outer  world  which  form  its  nutriment 

D  D   2 


404  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

than  his  mind  for  its  energy  on  the  universal  Mind  which  is 
the  source  of  its  suppHes  and  the  essence  of  its  being.  And 
perfectly  parallel  with  this  Greek  conception  is  the  simulta- 
neous Jewish  and  Christian  notion  of  Spirit,  as  the  common 
element  of  all  that  is  Divine,  whether  it  be  God  in  his  eternal 
essence,  or  the  heavenly  natures  nearest  to  him,  or  the  human 
souls  that  die  to  sin  and  live  to  him,  through  the  new  birth 
that  makes  them  his  true  sons. 

The  old  Hebrew  monotheism  was  sure  to  be  modified  into 
this  Hellenic  form,  as  soon  as  it  vvas  brought  into  the  focus  of 
philosophical  reflection.  The  fiat  of  Jehovah  could  not,  as  an 
act  of  Will,  be  permanently  accepted  as  an  absolute  beginning  : 
for  it  presupposes  the  presence  of  alternative  possibilities 
waiting  for  its  determination  ;  take  these  away,  and  it  be- 
comes a  blind  force,  no  more  imperative  than  the  weight  of  a 
millstone.  Volition,  the  starting-point  of  action,  is  itself  the 
issue  of  prior  thought  and  impulse :  and  for  this  there  must 
be  provision  in  the  background  of  the  nature  which  puts  it 
forth.  In  the  constitution  of  that  nature,  therefore,  we  must 
conceive  a  plurality  of  spiritual  powers,  all  functions  of  one 
essence  and  initiative  of  one  type  of  will.  It  was  not  diffi- 
cult, from  the  analogy  of  the  human  mind,  to  borrow  names 
for  the  Divine  '^wd^uQ  expressed  in  volition  :  and  in  the  play 
of  relation  which  Philo  invents  for  the  reason,  the  authority, 
the  goodness,  the  wisdom,  the  spirit,  and  the  words  of  the 
Most  High,  there  would  be  almost  a  mythology  constructed, 
were  it  not  that  the  changes  of  his  fancy  prevent  it  from 
settling  into  fixed  form.  But  the  Supreme  Essence  of  which 
all  these  are  but  the  manifold  expression  is  an  infinite  and 
inscrutable  Unity  compassable  by  neither  thought  nor  name. 
The  human  soul  cannot  even  know  its  own  essence,  any  more 
than  the  eye  can  see  itself ;  how  vain  therefore  to  imagine 
that  it  can  aj^prehend  Him  who  is  the  soul  or  mind  of  the 
universe !  *  He  alone  is  self-knowing  in  the  highest  sense, 
uniting  at  once  the  subjective  and  the  objective  conditions  of 
such  cognition  :  "  before  there  was  any  universe.  He  saw, 
using  Himself  as  light. "t     Unlike  man,  or  the   heaven,  or 

*  L9gg.  Alleg.  I.  29  ;  III.  9.     De  Gigant.  10. 

f  Quo  J  Deus  sit  immut,  12.     (^u)t\  xpi>iiivo':  iavru  kui  zpo  ■^ej't'accs. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        405 

the  world,  He  is  beyond  finite  conditions,  therefore  without 
discriminative  predicates,  therefore  no  object  of  intellectual 
apprehension,  except  as  to  his  existence :  that  is  a  fact  which 
we  understand  ;  but  beyond  that  we  discern  nothing.*  This 
incomprehensibility  of  God  in  his  absolute  essence  is  the 
basis  of  the  whole  doctrine  of  Philo,  often  giving  it  the 
momentary  aspect  of  a  complete  agnosticism ;  from  which 
however  it  escapes  by  more  than  one  ingenious  turn.  It  is 
only  the  primal  and  inmost  unity  of  the  Divine  existence, 
the  fountain  of  all  ere  yet  it  flows,  that  is  incognizable  by 
human  intelligence ;  when  it  breaks  the  eternal  silence  and 
comes  forth  in  modes  of  thought  and  power,  these  emana- 
tions from  tl:e  infinite  Source  speak  to  the  understanding 
and  make  its  sciences ;  and  when  followed  out  into  the 
phenomena  under  which  they  terminate,  define  the  laws  to 
which  life  and  its  expectations  must  conform.  From  the 
many  characteristic  expressions  which  this  distinction  re- 
ceives, it  suffices  to  take  the  following :  Moses,  inquiring 
after  the  Divine  nature,  prays  to  learn  it  from  God  himself, 
yet  finds  it  inaccessible,  and  is  told  '  Thou  shalt  see  what  is 
behind  me,  but  my  face  thou  shalt  not  behold  ; '  and  indeed 
it  is  enough  for  the  wise  man  to  know  ivli.at  is  sequent  upon 
God :  but  he  who  would  behold  his  essence  would  be  struck 
blind  ere  he  could  see  it.  It  is  glorious  to  contemplate,  but 
impossible  to  comprehend,  the  unoriginated  and  divine  Being, 
the  First  good  and  beautiful  and  happy  and  blessed,  that  in 
truth  is  better  than  good,  more  beautiful  than  beaut}',  more 
blessed  than  the  blest,  more  happy  than  happiness  itself,  and, 
if  possible,  transcending  whatever  is  more  perfect  than  these 
perfections.  AVere  the  universal  heaven  itself  turned  into  an 
articulate  voice,  it  would  fail  of  fitting  terms  in  which  to 
speak  his  essence.  No  created  nature  is  susceptible  of  know- 
ledge so  high ;  or  able  to  appreciate,  except  in  their  elTects, 
even  the  attributes  at  one  remove  from  God's  inner  essence. I 
From  our  conceptions  of  Him  all  that  is  changeable  and 
created  must  be  kept  at  a  distance  :  He  is  the  uncreated, 


*  Quod  Deus  sit  immut.  13. 

t  l>u  Profugis,  il'J.     De  virDut.  et  legat.  ad  Caium,  1.     De  mouarchai.  I.  6. 


.■4o6  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

immutable,  immortal,  and  lioly,  and  only  blessed  God.*  It 
is  safest  not  to  open  our  lips  to  speak  of  Him,  but  to  con- 
template Him  in  the  silence  of  the  soul  alone,  as  He  exists 
in  indivisible  unity,  t 

As  it  would  be  impossible,  by  any  effort  of  silent  abstrac- 
tion, to  "contemplate"  an  infinite  blank,  we  must  allow  for 
some  over- statement  of  the  author's  meaning  in  these  remark- 
able sentences,  and  take  them  as  severely  limiting,  rather 
than  as  totally  excluding,  access  for  the  human  mind  to  God 
himself.  He  does  not  really  mean  to  leave  us  in  the  dark 
even  with  regard  to  the  Divine  Essence.  He  warns  us  that 
effort  of  ours  can  never  reach  so  far,  or  go  behind  the 
properties  and  powers  that  radiate  from  that  unsearchable 
unity ;  but  expressly  allows  that  when  God  takes  the  initia- 
tive. His  knowledge  can  find  us,  though  we  cannot  attain  to 
it.  He  is  the  archetypal  light  and  needs  no  other  to  see 
with,t  whether  he  takes  cognizance  of  the  world  or  of  his 
own  infinitude ;  and  of  himself  he  has  imparted  a  share  to 
us ;  considering  that  created  souls  could  not,  of  their  own 
intrinsic  power,  apprehend  divine  things,  yet  that  such  know- 
ledge was  indispensable  to  blessedness,  he  breathed  into  men 
from  above  something  of  his  own  divine  nature,  §  and  became 
the  archetypal  pattern  of  what  is  highest  in  ourselves.  Thus, 
our  knowledge  of  God  is  regarded  as  his  dwelling  in  us,  and 
is  contingent,  not  on  any  exercise  of  our  faculties  as  created 
beings,  but  on  the  presence  with  us  of  the  uncreated  Spirit, 
constituting  a  communion,  like  with  like.  Within  the 
thoughts  of  the  truly  perfected,  the  God  and  ruler  of  all 
noiselessly  walks,  invisible  and  alone  :  there  is  his  house,  his 
holy  temple.  II  In  this  view,  all  religious  apprehension  has 
the  character  of  proper  inspiration,  and  by  its  immediate 
nature  discriminates  itself  from  scientific  knowledge,  the 
method  of  vvhich  is  logical  and  mediate.  God  imparts  him- 
self to  us  in  various  degrees,  proportioned  partly  to  our 
capacities,^  partly  to  his  designs  for  us,  partly  to  our  aspira- 
tions towards  him.**     But  once  commencing  our  communion, 

*  De  sacrif.  Abeli  and  Caini,  30.  t  Ce  Gigant.  11. 

J  De  Cherubim,  II.  23  §  Quod  deterior  potiori  insid.  solcat. 

II  De  somniis,  I.  23.  1i  De  posteritate  Caiui,  43.  **  Ibid.  41. , 


Chnp.  II.]      THEOEIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        407 

we  may  attain  to  ever  higher  degrees ;  for  as  the  fountain 
is  perennial,  it  can  never  fail  our  thirst ;  *  as  its  amplitude 
is  illimitable,  our  spiritual  growth  may  be  without  end.* 
Some  men  are  born  of  the  earth,  and  never  seem  to  escape 
slavery  to  the  pleasures  and  interests  of  sense ;  others  are 
born  of  heaven,  and  live  in  the  pursuit  of  scientific  culture ; 
others,  again,  are  horn  of  God,  and  are  the  true  priests  and 
prophets  of  mankind,  denizens  not  of  this  or  that  visible  por- 
tion of  the  world,  but  of  the  spiritual  whole  of  this  universe.! 

It  is  an  easy  thing  to  God  thus  to  make  the  human  mind 
his  own  ;  for  if  the  strong  winds  of  nature,  sweeping  over 
earth  and  sea,  can  lift  the  waves,  and  snatch  up  objects  that 
of  themselves  gravitate  downwards,  much  more  can  the 
Divine  Spirit  carry  off  the  soul  and  take  it  aloft  into  a  region 
of  thought  truly  kindred  with  itself. J  In  all  such  living 
inspiration  there  is  a  glorious  contagiousness.  No  mind  that 
gives  it  loses  what  it  gives ;  rather  does  it  more  intensely 
kindle  as  it  spreads  ;  and  just  as  one  torch  suffices  to  light  a 
thousand  and  multiply  the  flames,  so  does  the  touch  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  pass  from  soul  to  soul,  and  the  holy  fire  become 
brighter  as  it  flies. §  Nay,  so  far  does  Philo  press  this  con- 
ception of  the  converse  of  essence  between  the  source  and  the 
recipient  of  divine  light,  as  to  say  that  he  who  is  truly 
inspired  "  may  with  good  reason  be  called  God."  ||  The  higher 
mind,  indeed,  is  no  individual  or  personal  possession ;  rather 
is  it  a  common  spiritual  element  pervading  both  natures, 
God's  and  our  own,  the  medium  of  spiritual  understanding 
and  harmony.H  The  true  prayer  therefore  for  every  pious 
man  will  be,  that  he  may  have  the  Supreme  Euler  as  a  guest 
within,  to  raise  the  little  tenement  of  the  mind  in  which  he 
dwells  to  a  great  height  above  the  earth,  and  ally  it  with  the 
heaven.** 

It  is  only,  however,  to  the  truly  initiated,— the  souls  "  born 
of  God"  and  visited  by  him,  that  this  immediate  contact 
with  his  essence  is  possible  ;  they  alone  go  beyond  the  shadow 

*  De  postcritatc  Caini,  44.  t  De  Gigautibus,  131. 

%  De  plant.  Noe.  6.  •  §  De  Gigant.  6. 

II  De  nom.  mutat.  22.  IT  Ibid. 

**  De  sobrietate,  13. 


4oS  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

to  the  abiding  substance,  and  bring  its  inmost  meaning  as 
the  key  to  the  knowledge  of  created  things.  Ordinary  men, 
by  an  inverse  process,  receive  a  humbler  gift,  the  constructive 
interpretation  of  God  by  the  issues  of  his  living  power, 
whether  in  self-conscious  natures  that  reflect  the  direction  of 
his  thought,  or  in  physical  laws  and  tribes  of  creatures  that 
render  that  thought  explicit  in  a  visible  world.  It  is  in  deal- 
ing with  these  mediating  steps  of  divine  knowledge,  whether 
as  the  track  of  diluting  light  that  softens  our  darkness,  or 
that  of  progressive  illumination  that  draws  us  to  the  intenser 
borders  of  heaven,  that  Philo's  language  assumes  its  most 
marked  characteristics.  He  introduces  us  to  a  hierarchy  of 
mediating  agencies,  at  one  time  appearing  as  abstract  quali- 
ties, at  others  decked  out  with  the  features  and  dress  of 
prosopopeia  so  strong  that  but  for  the  rapid  change  of 
imagery,  it  would  be  taken  for  a  mythology. 

The  term  "  Father  "  is  appropriated  to  God  in  his  absolute 
Unity,  with  the  connotation,  of  course,  of  a  derivative 
plurality ;  the  Oneness  means,  says  Philo,  *'  not  that  he 
exists  in  unity,  but  that  unity  subsists  in  him ;  "*  i.e.,  the 
universe  is  a  coherent  single  reality  as  his  idea.  This  phrase- 
ology is  curiously  strained  in  more  than  one  connection  which 
might  have  tempted  Philo  to  relinquish  it.  Thus,  the  world 
being  treated  as  the  father  of  Time  because  supplying 
measures  to  its  lapse,  God  as  Father  of  the  world  is  pro- 
nounced to  be  the  Grandfather  of  Time ;  the  Divine  life  itself 
presenting  no  time,  but  only  the  beautiful  archetype  of  time, 
viz.,  Eternity ;  in  which  nothing  is  past  and  nothing  is 
future,  but  everything  present  only.f  This  play  upon  the 
family  relations  is  allowed  to  run  a  step  further ;  the  Father's 
creative  efficiency  has  its  partner  in  his  ao^ia  (wisdom),  which, 
as  feminine,  may  be  called  the  Mother  of  the  world  ;  who, 
when  her  time  of  travail  was  due,  brought  forth  the  only 
and  beloved  Son  perceptible  by  sense,  viz.,  this  universe. I 
So  little  does  Philo  shrink  from  this  idea  that  he  more  than 
once  recurs  to  it  and  calls  ao<^[a  the  wife,  the  virgin  wife,  of 
God,  Source  especially  of  the  virtues  of  pure  souls. §     In  this 

*  Leg.  Alleg.  III.  1.     Quis  rerum  divin.  haer.  33.         +  Quod  Deus  sit  immut.  C. 
X  De  cbi-ietate,  S.  §  Ce  Cherubim,  14. 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        409 

connection,  however,  he  suggests  that  the  word  "Father" 
would  be  more  appropriate  from  its  higher  dignity ;  and  he 
says  that  doubtless  cro^ta  is  feminine  towards  God,  as  secon- 
dary to  him,  and  masculine  towards  men  as  having  precedence 
over  them.*  The  Wisdom  which  is  ancillary  to  God  has 
rightful  lordship  over  mankind. 

The  relation  of  Fatherhood  involves  in  it  the  two  ideas  of 
new  existence,  and  of  continued  essence.  In  the  former 
aspect  alone,  as  a  derivative  product,  the  universe  would 
never  have  been  called  by  Philo  "  the  only  and  beloved  Son 
of  God  ;  "  the  phrase  befits  it  in  virtue  of  the  second  mark, 
as  embodying  in  its  constitution  the  essential  order  of  the 
Divine  perfections,  so  far  as  things  visible  can  express  their 
significance.  Not  as  a  perceptible  creature  offered  to  Sense, 
but  as  an  ideal  system,  the  living  projection  of  the  Infinite 
Spirit,  can  this  supreme  filiation  be  claimed  for  it.  Hence  it 
is  that,  for  the  sake  of  more  exact  expression,  the  Sonship  is 
sometimes  limited  to  the  intellectual  ground-plan  or  inner 
meaning  of  the  cosmos  in  the  Divine  consciousness,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  its  material  presence  to  human  perception : 
the  X070C  (o  law  \6-)og)  of  the  universe, — its  idea, — is  separ- 
ated, as  a  prior  step,  from  its  Ipya,  or  concrete  objects ;  and 
is  called  the  firstborn  Son  (Tr^xtiroyoroe  u'/oc)!  of  God.  The 
theory  or  Divine  prociram  of  the  world,  as  the  condition  of  its 
genesis,  lies  nearer,  by  one  remove,  to  the  essence  of  the 
Creator,  than  the  visible  heaven  and  earth ;  and  so  intercepts 
and  appropriates  their  title  to  be  called  his  Son  by  primo- 
geniture. 

Having  once  interposed  this  intellectual  term  between  the 
absolute  source  and  the  cosmical  phenomena,  Philo  might  be 
expected  to  repeat  at  the  second  step  the  language  selected 
for  the  first,  and  to  claim  the  universe  as  Son  of  the  Logos, 
now  that  the  Logos  occupied  the  place  of  Son  of  God.  By 
parity  of  expression  he  had  called  Time  the  grandson  of  God, 
because  determined  into  being  by  His  "  world."  And  this 
might  the  more  be  expected  because,  of  the  two  elements  in 
the  meaning  of  the  word  \6jog, — thoufilit  and  speech, — he 
emphasizes  the  first  as  the  living  source  of  the  second  ;  it  is 

*  De  profugis,  9.  t  Dc  Agricultura,  12. 


4IO  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

the  fountain  whence  by  nature  the  channels  of  uttered  speech 
receive  and  are  filled  ;  and  the  fountain  is  mind,*  Logos, 
both  in  the  universe  and  in  man's  nature  is  twofold ;  in  the 
universe  there  is  that  which  has  to  do  with  the  incorporeal 
idea  whence  the  world  was  constituted  a  thought- system,  and 
that  which  has  to  do  with  the  visible  objects  which  are 
representations  and  copies  of  these  ideas,  and  of  which  this 
perceptible  world  was  composed.  In  man,  again,  logos  is  on 
the  one  hand  conceptual  (£v8«a3'£roc),  and  on  the  other  express 
(jTQo<^o^iKoq)  :  the  former  a  fount,  as  it  were ;  the  latter,  flow- 
ing from  it  aloud  ;  the  former  having  its  seat  at  headquarters, 
{to  I'lyniiioviKov)  ;  the  latter  and  express,  in  tongue  and  mouth 
and  other  organs. f  This  analogy, — that  as  speech  is  to 
thought  in  man,  so  is  the  visible  creation  to  its  intellectual 
ground-plan, — is  the  key  to  much  of  Philo's  doctrine ;  and  the 
only  difference  which  he  points  out  as  crossing  the  analogy  is 
this,  that  while  the  human  voice  is  made  to  be  heard,  that  of 
God  is  literally  to  be  seen ;  for  whatever  God  says  consists  not 
in  words  {prinaTu),  but  in  works  iiiija),  aj^preciated  by  eye 
rather  than  by  ear. J  It  would  be  only  consistent  in  Philo  to 
treat  the  visible  cosmos  as  no  less  an  offspring  of  the  Divine 
Logos  than  is  the  speech  and  literature  of  mankind  the  off- 
spring of  the  human  logos.  Wliy  does  he  never  claim  for  the 
world  the  title  "  Son  of  the  Logos  ?  "  Because,  I  imagine, 
he  reserves  this  relation  exclusively  for  that  which  comes 
straight  out  of  the  essence  of  a  spiritual  nature,  and  will  not 
extend  it  to  what  issues  from  an  attribute,  like  Logos,  itself 
subsisting  in  the  essence. 

Another  anomaly  in  this  language  of  Philo  has  some  signifi- 
cance for  his  interpreters.  In  spite  of  his  comparison  of  the 
universe  with  speech  in  man  {explicit  logos),  he  never,  I 
believe,  directly  applies  the  word  Logos  to  the  visible  world, 
but  only  to  the  thought  that  lies  behind.  The  universe,  he 
tells  us,  is  "the  only  Son  of  God;"  and  so  is  the  Logos; 
"the>So/t"  therefore  is  one  object  with  two  Synonyms;  and 
yet  the  Synonyms  are  not  interchangeable  !  The  reason  is 
the  same  as  in  the  previous  anomaly.     So  far  forth  as  each 

*  Quod  deter,  potiori  insid.  soleat.  25. 

t  Vita  Mos.  III.  13.  X  De  decern  crac.  11. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        411 

(the  world  and  the  Logos)  is  "  Son  of  God,"  both  must  be 
immediately  from  the  Divine  essence,  and  have  their  filiation 
only  in  that  which  such  proximate  position  makes  common  to 
both,  i.e.,  in  the  ideal  ground  and  meaning  immanent  in  the 
cosmos,  and  connoted  in  Logos  as  a  name  for  thought,  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  word's  other  sense,  of  spoken  words.  The 
universe,  when  treated  as  "only  Son  of  God,"  is  regarded  as 
itself  the  thinking  out  of  the  Divine  idea,  and  not  as  a  second 
step  of  physical  utterance,  the  outcome  of  a  prior  plan,  and 
falls  into  coincidence  with  only  the  intellectual  meaning  of 
Logos,  severed  from  the  vocal.  Nor  does  it  cover  the  whole, 
even  of  this  ;  for  Philo's  cosinos  did  not  exhaust  the  resources 
of  God's  infinite  reason,  so  as  to  leave  his  Logos  no  more  that 
it  is  possible  to  do  ;  transcendent  as  well  as  immanent,  the 
scope  of  thought-construction  thus  far  realized  is  no  measure 
of  its  unknown  reserves  ;  so  that  even  in  giving  the  universe, 
the  Logos  does  not  give  the  whole  of  itself.  The  relations  are 
difficult  to  adjust :  if  the  two  are  made  successive,  the  universe 
loses  its  sonship  ;  if  they  are  identified,  the  Logos  is  shorn  of 
its  infinitude. 

Though,  however,  Philo's  Logos  winds  a  changeful  way 
through  his  fantastic  imager}-,  and  now  Immanent,  is  scarcely 
distinguishable  from  the  world  as  a  realized  divine  order,  and 
now  Transcendent,  lapses  into  God's  own  essence  ;  yet,  on  the 
Vvdiole,  the  attentive  reader  will  find  its  middle  place  obviously 
intended  and  fairly  preserved :  and  at  the  upper  end,  especially, 
its  distinction  is  unmistakably  marked  from  God  as  its  prior 
no  less  than  its  superior  term.  The  Logos  is  his  creative  and 
administrative  instrument ;  he  needs  no  material  media  for 
action  :  in  dispensing  his  gifts.  Logos  is  his  minister,  by 
which  also  he  fabricated  the  universe.*  The  precise  relation 
of  this  deputed  to  the  original  agent  is  distinctly  indicated 
when  it  is  said  respecting  the  universe,  "  The  cause  of  it  yoii 
will  find  to  be  God,  by  whom  (u^'  ov)  it  comes  into  being : 
the  matter  of  it,  the  four  elements  of  which  it  is  composed : 
the  instrument  of  it,  the  Logos  of  God,  by  whose  means 
(St  ov)  it  was  constituted  :  and  the  motive  source  (airmv) 
of  its  constitution,  the  goodness  of  the  maker."!     This  Logos 

*  Quod  Dcus  immut.  12.  t  Dc  Chei-ubim,  35. 


413  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV, 

of  God,  which  he  used  as  his  instrument  in  forming  the 
cosmos  is  the  shadow  of  himself ;  and  this  shadow  or  model  is 
the  archetype  of  all  else  ;  for  as  God  is  the  pattern  of  his 
image  or  shadow,  so  does  this  again  become  the  pattern  of 
other  things.* 

This  favourite  image,  of  the  model  and  the  copy,  suits  well 
enough  the  analogy  between  the  Divine  preconception  and  the 
cosmical  presentation  of  the  scheme  of  things  ;  but  is  an 
inadequate  rendering  of  the  author's  entire  doctrine.  Pattern 
and  copy  are  both  of  them  objects  contemplated  by  a  com- 
paring artist  distinct  from  both  ;  and  would  naturally  occur 
as  illustrations  to  Philo  the  Jew,  already  familiar  with  the 
translation  of  the  visionary  "  tabernacle  on  the  mount  "  into 
its  miniature  below.  But  Philo  the  Platonist  had  more  to  say 
than  that  two  separate  things  were  made  like  to  a  third 
which  was  different  from  both.  He  meant  to  affirm  that  the 
eldog  of  the  first  was  present  in  the  second  as  its  objective 
essence,  and  in  the  third  as  its  subjective  perception  of 
resemblance  and  clew  to  imitation.  One  and  the  same  Logos, 
the  base  of  a  common  understanding,  did  it  all,  constituting 
a  unity  rather  than  an  analogy ;  subsisting  in  the  order  of 
the  universe  and  living  in  the  consciousness  of  man,  it  carries 
into  his  nature  as  intelligent  the  attributes  and  epithets  it  has 
already  attached  to  the  world  as  intelligible,  unifying  the 
categories  of  thought,  thinking,  thinkable.  The  human  soul 
is  made  after  the  image  of  God  ;  is  stamped  with  his  seal ; 
is  the  abode  of  his  Word,  his  interpreter,  his  son.  To  the 
soul  God  gives  a  seal, — a  glorious  gift, — to  teach  it  that  on 
the  indeterminateness  of  all  things  he  impressed  a  determinate 
essence,  and  shaped  the  shapeless,  and  defined  the  character- 
less, and,  in  perfecting  the  whole,  stamped  the  universe  with 
an  image  and  idea,  viz.  his  own  Logos. f  The  soul  of  man 
was  a  copy  taken  from  the  archetypal  Logos  of  the  Supreme 
cause.  I  Hence  the  attraction  to  him  of  those  who  are  drawn 
upwards  ;§  their  love  of  retirement,  and  longing  to  attend 
alone  on  God ; I!  for  the  soul  is,  in  man,  what  heaven  is  in 

*  Leg.  All.  III.  31.  t  De  somuiis,  II.  6.     Cf.  De  prof.  2. 

J  De  plant.  Noe,  5.     Cf.  De  mundo,  3. 

§  De  plant.  Noe,  6.  II  Quis  rerum  divin.  liEeres,  43. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OE   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        413 

the  universe.  The  t^yo  natures,  that  of  reason  in  us  and  of 
the  divine  Logos  above  us, — the  mind  in  us  and  the  mind 
above  us, — are  indivisible  and  correspondent ;  each  engaged 
similarly  and  in  sympathy  with  divine  things  by  essence  and 
kind,  one  in  the  world  of  being,  the  other  in  the  world  of 
thought.*  Keasoning  indeed  is  but  a  fragment  from  the  soul 
of  the  universe,  or,  in  Mosaic  language,  an  answering  impress 
of  a  divine  image,  t  These  various  attempts  to  establish  the 
homogeneity  of  the  Logos  in  God,  in  Nature,  and  in  ]\Ian, 
would  seem  to  rank  Philo  amongst  those  Jewish  writers  to 
whom  Spinoza  attributed  a  hazy  apprehension  of  the  truth 
that  God,  God's  understanding,  and  the  things  understood 
thereby,  are  one  and  the  same.t  Yet  the  "  indivisibility  "  of 
"  the  mind  within  us  "  is  so  constantly  crossed  by  the  insertion 
of  a  mediatio7i  between  these  terms  that  an  explanation  is 
needed  of  the  apparent  contradiction.  A  conflicting  tendency 
is  evidently  at  work,  and  presses  the  author's  thought  into  a 
deviation.  It  is  found  in  his  estimate  of  matter  as  undivine 
and  antithetic  to  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  life  of  the 
natures  burdened  witli  it.  From  a  confusion  of  the  two 
senses  of  the  word  "  corruption,'"  to  denote  organic  dissolidion 
and  moral  depraration,  it  was  deemed  necessary  to  keep  the 
immaculate  Holiness  of  God  clear  of  all  responsibility  for  the 
constitution  of  perishable  things,  and  to  hand  over  the  story 
of  their  vicissitudes  to  secondary  agencies.  Pure  and 
original  good  he  himself  may  give  ;  but  even  the  remedies  for 
ill  must  come  through  commissioned  instruments,  and 
especially  his  Logos,  the  physician  of  human  maladies.  § 
Well  may  he  be  compared  with  the  Sun,  if  Smi  there  be  that 
casts  no  shadow;  "  He  is  light,  and  in  him  is  no  darkness  at 
all."  !  Yet  even  this  is  but  a  symbol:  he  is  not  only  light, 
but  the  archetype  of  all  light  besides  ;  or  rather,  older  than 
the  archetype  and  prior,  containing  the  intellectual  essence 
(Ao'yov)  of  the  model :  for  his  own  Logos  in  its  plenitude 
was  the  model ;  light,  it  may  be  called  ;  but  he  himself  cannot 
bo  compared  with  things  that  come  to  be.^ 

•  Quis  rerum  diviu.  hasres,  IS.  t  De  mut.  nom.  39. 

+  Ethica.  II.  vii.  Scho!.  §  Leg.  All.  III.  GJ. 

11  1  John  i.  D.  1[  Do  somuiis,  1. 13. 


414  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

The  cosmos,  as  an  assemblage  of  mixed  natm-es,  subjected 
for  the  most  part  to  change  and  death,  did  not,  in  consistency 
with  this  principle,  owe  its  genesis  to  the  immediate  fiat  of  the 
Most  High  :  hence  it  is  that,  to  alight  on  the  creative  Agent 
and  procedm'e,  Philo  descends  one  step,  and  finds  the  work 
committed  to  the  most  ancient  Logos,  neither  created  nor 
nncreate,  and  thenceforth  administered  by  him  :  for  it  is  not 
God  himself  who  is  the  indwelling  principle,  invisible  and 
inappreciable  except  to  the  soul ;  but  no  other  than  the  Logos 
which  is  older  than  originated  things,  by  hold  of  which,  as  by 
a  helm,  the  Pilot  of  all  steers  the  system,  and  by  use  of  which, 
as  an  instrument,  when  he  was  forming  the  world,  he 
accomplished  the  faultless  constitution  of  his  work.*  In  this 
withholding  of  the  world  from  immediate  relation  to  God  in 
himself,  man  also  is  involved,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the 
turn  of  expression  in  the  account  of  his  creation  ;  for  observe, 
he  is  made,  not  "  an  imar/c,"  but  "after  the  image,"  of  God, 
i.e.  in  the  likeness  of  his  primary  reflection,  viz.  the  Logos. t 
Nay,  a  deeper  look  into  this  language  discloses  an  authority 
for  even  deifying  the  Logos.  "AVhy,"  asks  Philo,  "is  it  not 
simply  said,  '  God  created  man  in  Ids  oum  image  ?  '  Why  does 
the  scripture  say  rather  '  God  created  him  in  the  image  of  God,' 
as  if,  besides  the  Creator  who  made,  there  were  another  God 
who  served  as  a  pattern  in  the  making  ?  Most  beautifully 
(he  replies)  is  this  oracle  expressed :  for  no  mortal  nature 
could  be  formed  in  the  immediate  image  of  the  Supreme 
Father  of  all,  but  only  in  that  of  the  second  God,  which  is  his 
Logos.  For  the  tj'pe  of  thought  in  the  soul  of  man  must 
needs  take  its  impress  from  the  divine  Logos,  since  the  God 
prior  to  the  Logos  is  superior  to  every  thinking  nature  ;  and 
it  was  not  permissible  for  any  creature  to  be  made  like  the 
God  who  is  above  the  Logos  in  a  type  of  being  uniquely  best 
and  subsisting  alone. "J 

The  distinction,  in  Philo's  theology,  between  the  inaccessible 
perfection  and  the  express  thought  and  life  of  God  repeats 
itself  in  his  anthropology  :  the  man  whose  creation  is  described 

*  De  migratione  Abraham  i,  1.  t  Quis  rer.  div.  hoer.  48. 

Z  Fragm.  ex  Euseb.  Prcepar.  Evang.  Lib.  VII.  xiii.     Cf.  Qucest.  et  Solut.  iu 
■Gen.  ii.  62. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        .\\^ 

in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  being  the  generic  type  of  ideal 
humanity  modenecl  after  the  divine  Logos ;  while  the  Adam 
of  the  second  chapter  is  the  concrete  individual,  in  whom  the 
bodily  features  reflect,  and  are  made  to  express,  that  generic 
type,  under  the  conditions  of  the  particular  instance,  "  The 
latter  is  the  visible  man,  in  his  likeness  to  the  conceptual 
model :  the  former  is  the  incorporeal  and  spiritual  man,  in  the 
likeness  of  the  archetype,  and  so  representing  a  higher  charac- 
ter, the  divine  Logos,  the  first  principle,  the  prototype,  the 
original  measure,  of  all  nature."* 

Li  virtue  of  the  analogy,  in  their  divine  origin,  of  the  out- 
ward and  the  human  world,  God  may  be  said  "to  have  two 
temples,"  in  which  he  is  concurrent^,  yet  differently  served  : 
viz.  (1.)  the  Universe,  where  his  own  primary  Logos  is  itself 
permanent  High  Priest  as  well  as  constructive  architect,  and 
is  the  source  and  security  of  unswerving  law,  the  bond  of  all 
things,  clothed  with  the  world  like  the  soul  with  the  body  ; 
(2.)  self-conscious  creaturely  Eeason  (Aoyjic};  •■//I'X'))  whose 
Priest  is  ISLan  in  his  true  essence  (6  w^joc  a\y]^Hav  av^pivTro^) , 
the  ideal  mind  and  will,  clad  with  the  virtues.!  Here,  the 
administration  of  the  sacred  Logos  deals,  not  with  necessary 
nature  which  cannot  go  astray,  but  with  free  spirits  which 
may  cut  themselves  off  from  its  guidance  and  get  lost  in  the 
wilds.  Its  function,  therefore,  becomes  not  simply  intellectual 
as  the  "interpreter  of  God," I  "the  true  and  genuine 
philosophy,"§  "  the  heavenly  manna,"  "  the  bread  of  God," 
"the  dew  of  the  soul,"  the  "  pupil  of  the  inner  eye  ;"|i  but 
moral,  as  the  "  frost "  that  lays  a  congealing  hand  on  the 
current  of  earthly  desires,1I  "  the  honey-bearing  rock,**  "  the 
convicting  conscience,  tt  which  gives  the  knowledge  and  with 
it  the  reality  of  sin,tt  and  at  once  humbles  and  heals  us  with 
a  correcting  shame.  §§ 

How  completely,  in  this  moral  relation,  it  answers  to  the 
conception  of  "the  Holy  Spirit"  may  be  seen  from  a  single 


■"  Qutest.  et  solut.  in  Gen.  i.  4.  t  De  somuiis,  p.  37. 

+  Quod  Deus  immut.  29.  §  De  poster.  Caini,  30. 

II  Leg.  Alleg.  III.  59.  ^I  Ibid.  60. 

»*  Quod  det.  pot.  insid.  31.  ++  Quod  Deus  immut.  37. 

XX  Ibid.  28.  §§  Quod  det.  pot.  insid.  iO. 


4i6  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

passage  :  so  long  as  this  most  holy  Logos  lives  and  abides  in 
the  soul,  it  excludes  by  its  own  natural  unsusceptibility  of  all 
sin,  the  possibility  of  involuntary  perversion  entering  there ; 
but  if  it  die,  not  of  course  by  any  perishing  in  itself,  but  by 
parting  from  the  soul,  an  entrance  is  immediately  given  to 
voluntary  offences  :  banished  while  it  remained  in  its  vigour, 
on  its  departure  they  will  be  reinstated.  For  this  choice 
privilege  has  been  assigned  to  Conscience,  our  undefiled  high 
priest ;  that  it  allows  no  slippery  place  in  it  for  the  will  to 
fall.*  Under  this  aspect  the  Logos  is  at  one  time  termed 
"  the  divine  angel  "f  that  guides  us  ;  at  another  the  true  man, 
the  convicter  of  the  soul ;  \  the  Logos  of  God  being  thus  the 
living  source  of  moral  law  and  righteousness,  the  actions  of 
the  wise  and  good  are  but  articulate  expressions  of  its  mean- 
ing ;  they  are  truly  "  divine  words  "  :§  here  words  and  deeds 
are  all  the  same,  and  both  may  be  admitted  to  the  name  of 
■  angels.' II  The  righteous  are  thus  all  enrolled  as  sons  of  one 
and  the  same  Father,  not  a  mortal  but  an  immortal,  the  Man 
of  God  who,  as  the  Logos  of  the  eternal,  must  needs  be  him- 
self imperishable. H  If  as  yet  a  man  is  not  worthy  to  be 
called  a  Son  of  God,  let  him  give  diligence  to  order  himself  by 
God's  first-born  Logos,  the  eldest  angel,  or,  in  truth,  arch- 
angel of  many  names;  for  he  is  called  the  beginning  (aVx''^' 
and  the  name  of  God,  and  Logos,  and  Man  in  the  image,  and 
beholder  of  Israel.  This  it  was  (he  says)  that  led  me  just 
now  to  praise  the  excellent  who  say  "We  are  all  the  sons  of 
one  man."  For  if  we  are  not  yet  fit  to  be  deemed  sons  of 
God,  yet  we  may,  at  least,  be  called  sons  of  his  eternal  image, 
the  most  sacred  Logos ;  for  the  most  sacred  Logos  is  his 
image.** 

As  the  spotless  holiness  of  the  Most  High  is  saved  by  com- 
mitting the  creative  process  to  a  "  second  God  "  to  convey  his 
ideal  purpose  into  the  materials  it  has  to  mould,  so  does  the 
corporeal  investiture  thus  commenced  mingle  more  and  more 
alloy  with  that  pure  primal  light  at  each  successive  step  of 

*  De  prof.  21.  t  Quod  Deus  immut.  37. 

+  De  prof.  23.  §  De  migr.  Abr.  23. 

II  De  confus.  ling.  S.  H  Ibid.  8. 
*-  Ibid.  2y. 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        ^.17 

derivative  genesis.  Hence,  the  entrance  of  imperfection,  and 
the  ulterior  ills  that  arise  upon  the  track  of  life,  are  to  be  charged 
not  on  the  infinite  Source,  but  on  the  intermediate  agencies, 
which  partly  execute,  but  partly  spoil,  his  thought.  In  the 
Logos  itself  indeed  there  is  as  yet  no  incipient  shade ;  second 
in  order  cnly,  not  in  purity,  it  is  but  infinite  Eeason  turned 
into  definite  truth,  possible  righteousness  kindled  into  con- 
scious aspiration :  so  that  it  seems  often  indifferent  to  Philo 
whether  he  attributes  what  is  excellent  and  beautiful  to  God 
himself  or  to  the  "  sacred  Logos,"  or  even  to  the  human  soul 
possessed  by  it.  But  again  and  again  he  insists  that  God  is 
the  cause  only  of  the  good  ;  that  in  the  creation  he  was  him- 
self the  author  of  whatever  is  best,  but  had  assistants  who 
were  charged  with  all  admixture  of  evil ;  and  that  he  still 
operates  all  the  good  in  the  human  mind.  Xor  is  this  rule 
content  with  protecting  the  Divine  agency  from  contact  with 
the  moral  failure  of  mankind.  Even  natural  disturbances, 
such  as  "earthquakes,  and  plagues, and  lightning  strokes,"  are 
improperly  though  commonly  said  to  be  heaven-sent ;  for  God 
is  the  cause  of  no  ill  at  all ;  and  they  are  due  to  changes  in  the 
physical  elements  belonging,  not  "  to  the  leading  phenomena 
of  nature,  but  to  those  which  follow  in  the  train  of  such  by 
necessary  laws."  The  rule  explains  the  plural  form,  so 
startling  to  the  strict  monotheist,  of  the  final  creative  project, 
"  Let  us  make  man?  "  Wliy  does  the  Creator  invite  the  co- 
operation of  others  in  this  particular  work?  That  he  himself, 
the  guide  of  all,  might  be  responsible  for  the  faultless  purposes 
and  acts  of  man  in  his  uprightness,  while  the  opposite  class 
lay  at  the  door  of  his  subordinates ;  for  it  was  right  that  no 
evil  should  be  chargeable  on  the  Father  by  the  children.*  To 
God,  he  elsewhere  says,  it  belongs  to  plant  and  raise  the 
virtues  in  the  soul ;  and  it  is  self-love  and  atheism  in  the  mind 
to  put  itself  here  on  an  equality  with  God,  and  fancy  itself 
Agent,  when  on  closer  view  it  is  but  Patient :  for  when  it  is 
God  that  sows  and  plants  the  good  in  the  soul,  it  is  impiety 
in  the  mind  to  say,  "  I  am  the  planter."  t 

It  is  not,  however,  only  of  the  entrance  of  evil  that  the 

*  Dc  mundi  opif.  2-1.     Cf.  40  ;  also  dc  confus.  Hug.  34,  35  ;  de  prof.  13 ;  de 
mutat.  uom.  4.  t  Leg.  All.  I.  15. 

E    E 


41 8  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

relation  between  the  First  Cause  and  his  subordinates  gives 


&^ 


account ;  it  also  opens  a  way  for  its  redemption.  The  inter- 
mediaries demanded  by  the  infinite  elevation  of  God  above 
the  world,  wdiile  serving  as  messengers  and  menials  and  penal 
agents  of  his  realm,  are  themselves  akin  both  to  Him  and  to 
the  crea,ted  natures  receiving  from  them  the  orders  of  his  will ; 
and  being  touched  at  once  by  devotion  to  him  and  sympathy 
with  them,  are  qualified,  when  alienation  arises,  to  warn,  to 
intercede,  and  pray  for  reconciliation.  The  main  host  ((rrparo'c) 
of  them  is  supposed  by  Philo  to  consist  of  incorporeal  and 
happy  souls,"*  "identical  with  the  beings  called  demons 
(8at>ov£c)  by  the  philosophers, — souls  flitting  in  the  air  :  "  f 
by  Moses  happily  designated  as  angels,  sent  on  missions  of 
good  from  the  Euler  to  his  subjects,  and  serviceable  to  the 
King  in  the  concerns  of  their  obedience.  I  They  are  sub- 
ordinate ministers  and  priests  of  God  in  the  temple  of  the 
universe. 

But  as  these  ministering  natures  owe  all  their  beneficent 
influence  to  their  indwelling  share  of  the  sacred  Logos,  so  is 
it  in  that  Divine  Logos  itself  that  the  redeeming  function  is 
centred.  The  unique  feature  of  his  intermediate  position  fits 
him  for  a  mediatorial  office.  The  Father  who  gave  origin  to 
the  universe  intrusted  to  the  most  ancient  and  archetypal 
Logos  a  special  function,  to  stand  on  the  confines  and  mark 
the  limits  between  the  created  and  the  Maker ;  at  once  con- 
stant suppliant  (tKfVr)^)  to  the  Immortal  on  behalf  of  the 
perishing  mortal,  and  ambassador  of  the  Euler  to  the  subject. 
And  the  Logos  delights  in  the  function  and  announces  it  with 
exaltation,  '  I  was  appointed  to  stand  between  the  Lord  and 
you  ;  being  neither  uncreate  as  God  nor  created  as  you,  but 
as  midway  between  the  extremes,  serving  as  hostage  for  both : 
with  the  Parent,  a  pledge  that  the  race  shall  never  utterly 
perish  and  rebelliously  prefer  disorder  to  order  ;  with  the  off- 
spring, that  the  merciful  God  would  never,  it  might  be  confi- 
dently hoped,  disregard  his  own  work.'  '  For  I  am  to  be  the 
herald  of  peaceful  tidings  to  the  creation  fi.'om  Him  who  has 
decreed  the  abolition  of  strife, — God,  the  Guardian  of  peace 

*  Sacrif.  Abeli  et  Caini,  2.  +  De  Gigant.  2. 

%  De  plant.  Noe.  4.     Cf.  De  monarch,  II.  1  ;  de  mundo,  3. 


Ghap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.         419 

for  ever.'  ^  It  is  partly  in  virtue  of  this  function  that  Philo 
repeatedly  compares  the  Logos,  as  we  have  seen,  with  the 
priest  in  the  temple  who  makes  the  worshippers'  peace  with 
Gctl.  And  it  is  interesting  to  find  the  word  Paraclete  applied 
to  him  in  precisely  the  sense  which  it  bears  Li  1  John  ii.  1. 
*'  If  any  man  sin  we  have  an  advocate  with  the  Father,  Jesus 
Christ  the  Eighteous."  The  passage  affirms  that  for  conse- 
cration to  the  Father  of  the  universe  it  is  needful  "to  have  as 
advocate  the  Son  perfect  in  virtue  (the  Logos) ,  for  the  oblivion 
of  sins  and  the  unsparing  supply  of  blessings."  f  This  con- 
ception of  the  mediating  function  of  the  Logos  can  hardly 
have  been  without  influence  on  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews,  when  he  wrote,  "  We  have  not  a  high  priest 
that  cannot  be  touched  with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities,  but 
one  that  hath  been  in  all  points  tried  as  we  are,  and  yet  with- 
out sin:"  to  stand  on  the  confines  of  the  heavenly  and  the 
earthly  life,  and  be  at  one  with  the  affections  of  l)oth,  is  the 
qualifying  condition  of  the  perfect  mediator.  That  is  the 
common  thought  of  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  writer.  ' 
From  the  vast  and  various  assemblage  of  predicates  accumu- 
lated upon  the  Logos  the  modern  student  will  not  feel  that  he 
issues  with  a  clear  result,  unless  he  can  say  w^hether  they 
constitute  a  Personal  being,  or  are  mere  personifications  of 
something  Impersonal.  And  this  question  is  one  which  can 
never  be  answered,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  conception 
of  "  Personality,"  as  now  held,  is  a  later  acquisition  of  the 
West -European  mind,  and  has  no  equivalent  in  the  philosophy 
which  threw  itself  into  the  old  Greek  moulds  of  thought.  The 
space  therefore  is  blank  where  we  should  seek  an  answer  to 
the  question  most  interesting  to  us.  But  this  disappointment 
is  no  more  chargeable  on  Philo  than  on  the  early  writers  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  and  on  the  very  creeds  which  authorita- 
tively defined  its  faith  :  for,  there  also,  the  word  selected  for 
the  supposed  distinctions  in  the  Godhead  meant  nothing  like 
what  we  understand  by  "person."     In  the  absence  of  this 

*  Quis  rcr.  div.  hseres.  I.  42,  paraphrasing  Num.  xvi.  43. 

f  Vita  Mos.  III.  14.  Heinze's  doubt  about  the  iuterpretatiou  of  this 
passage  seems  (in  the  last  result  even  to  himself)  superfluous:  Die  Lehre 
vom  Logos  in  der  Griech.  Philos.,  von  Dr.  Max  Heinze,  p.  283  seq^q^. 

E    E   2 


420  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

idea,  recourse  was  had  to  one  or  both  of  two  antitheses, 
Substance — Attribute  and  Source — Derivative,  or,  with  a  view 
to  combine  both  in  one,  Essence — Phenomenon ;  and  it  is  vain 
to  test  the  position  of  the  Logos  by  other  standard  than 
these. 

If  all  that  there  is  must  be  either  substance  (hypostasis)  or 
attribute,  i.e.,  an  existence  in  itself,  or  a  character  of  some- 
thing else,  the  Logos  must  certainly  have  place  in  the  former 
category.  For,  as  the  instrumental  agent  in  creation,  as  the 
interpreter  of  the  Divine  idea  into  physical  law  and  concrete 
fact,  as  the  vehicle  of  spiritual  light  into  the  consciousness  of 
mortal  man,  he  spared  the  Most  High  the  need  of  dealing  with 
material  conditions  inconformable  with  his  absolute  holiness. 
There  is  therefore  a  substitution  of  one  acting  subject  for 
another  ;  which  could  not  be  if  he  were  only  a  property  or 
function  of  that  other.  His  relation  to  God  theiefore  is  not 
that  of  attribute  to  substance. 

Is  it  then  that  of  Derivative  to  Source?  It  is  so  often 
illustrated  by  the  imagery  of  efHuence  or  emanation,  of  the 
stream  from  its  fountain,  of  the  rays  from  the  stars,  of  the 
moonlight  from  the  sun,  and  by  instances  of  successive  genesis, 
as  of  spoken  or  written  words  from  inward  thought,  or  of  the 
Son  from  the  Father,  that  we  are  naturally  tempted  to  look 
for  our  answer  here.  And  the  hope  receives  support  from  the 
metaphors  of  archetype  and  ectype,  of  reflected  images  and 
shadows.  It  seems  even  to  be  realized  when  we  alight  upon 
the  assertion  that  he  who  has  reached  the  divine  Logos  is  still 
far  from  the  more  distant  God  (6  Trpo  tov\o^ov  ^edc),  whom  no 
man  can  apprehend.*  Here,  as  in  every  instance  in  which 
the  Logos  is  described  as  next  to  God  on  the  way  from  the 
eternal  to  the  perishable,  the  conception  of  an  originated  being 
is  irresistibly  suggested.  And  yet,  if  it  be  accepted,  what 
becomes  of  the  substantive  character  of  the  Logos  as  an  hypos- 
tasis ?  That  word,  applied  to  anything  horn,  forfeits  its  dis- 
tinctive meaning,  of  "  that  which  is  self-subsisting,"  and  is  at 
the  disposal  of  any  effect  out  of  which  further  subordinate 
effects  may  arise.  Besides,  we  have  been  explicitly  instructed 
to  think  of  the  Logos  as  "  neither  created,  nor  uncreated'  and  are 

*  De  somniis,  I.  11. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        421 

thus  forbidden  to  go  behind  it  for  any  origin,  and  yet  warned 
against  regarding  it  as  the  primal  and  eternal  Being. 

From  this  contradiction  Philo  does  not  offer,  or  even  seek, 
any  way  of  escape.  His  own  mind, — a  cm'ious  repository  of 
the  mixed  and  incoherent  culture  of  Alexandria, — appropri- 
ated, without  reconciling,  the  religious  elements  of  the  Hebrew- 
transcendental  and  the  Greek  immanental  monotheism,  and 
wrought  them  into  a  texture  of  thought  in  which  the  philoso- 
phical relations  are  of  the  loosest  kind,  and  form  not  so  much 
the  tenacious  web  as  the  ornamental  pattern  of  the  whole 
fabric.  He  probably  conceived,  under  the  supreme  Divine 
Name,  of  an  infinite  potentiality  of  thought  and  perfect  will, 
eternally  existing  and  implicitly  containing  all  the  combina- 
tions that  might  be ;  and,  under  the  name  of  the  Logos,  the 
definite  system  of  intellectual  relations  which  explicitly 
emerged  from  that  infinitude  into  the  actual  laws  of  the 
rational  and  moral  cosmos.  Such  a  conception,  of  the 
development  of  the  Divine  spiritual  essence  into  an  insti- 
tuted order  of  living  expression,  would  easily  take  on,  in  its 
applications,  all  the  characteristic  imagery  which  clusters 
around  "the  second  God  "  of  Philo.  The  logical  straits  into 
which,  when  hard  pressed,  it  may  easily  be  driven,  were  unfelt 
if  not  unnoticed,  in  the  relief  which  it  afforded  to  deep  re- 
ligious wants.  It  annihilated  the  severance  between  God  and 
the  world  by  an  approximation  in  opposite  directions ;  planting 
Him  within  its  great  circles  as  the  intellectual  essence  of  all 
that  they  contain  or  bring  to  pass ;  and  lifting  man  into  con- 
scious assimilation  with  Him  by  communion  of  moral  life  and 
love.  That  the  movement  towards  this  union  was  conceived 
by  Philo  as  an  object  of  Divine  intent,  supreme  among  the 
ends  of  creation,  cannot  be  doubted  :  whether  the  Logos  in- 
trusted with  it  was  regarded  by  him  as  a  personal  Agent 
separately  knowing  his  appointed  task,  or  as  a  distributed 
spiritual  infiueiice  at  work  both  in  heaven  and  on  earth,  it  is 
impossible  to  decide.  It  was  at  all  events  something  over  and 
above  either  the  absolute  self-existence  of  God  or  the  moulding 
of  man  "  out  of  the  dust  of  the  ground :"  it  was  a  separate 
mediatorial  provision,  forming  a  distinct  department  in  the 
inner  thought  and  outer  activity  of  the  Divine  nature ;  and 


422  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

SO,  prepared  the  way,  if  it  should  ever,  through  the  reverence 
of  man,  become  identified  with  some  transcendent  personahty, 
for  that  pecuhar  notion  of  humanized  Deity,  which  has  in- 
fringed in  Christendom  on  the  simphcity  of  the  ancient 
monotheisnio  In  a  world  penetrated  with  the  tastes  and 
brilliant  with  the  art  of  heathendom,  the  path  was  but  too 
easily  entered ;  and  it  did  not  tate  long  for  the  Logos  to 
"  become  flesh." 


B.  The  Word  "made  Flesh:' 

Nothing  could  be  more  natural  than  that,  as  the  figure  of 
Jesus  receded  into  the  historic  distance,  and  was  seen  through 
a  brightening  haze  of  reverence,  a  more  and  more  ideal  theory 
of  his  person  should  form  itself  in  the  mind  of  his  disciples, 
and  spoil  them  for  the  simplicity  of  its  first  impression.  So 
long  as  the  interpretation  of  his  nature  and  office  remained  in 
the  hands  of  his  Galilean  companions,  it  was  exercised  under 
the  restraint  of  positive  memory,  and  the  living  colours  were 
too  fresh  not  to  betray  themselves  below  the  films  of  later 
fancy ;  and  so,  when  we  have  cleared  the  surface  from  the 
Messianic  doctrine  which,  like  some  monkish  homily  written 
over  the  text  of  an  ancient  monument  of  genius,  hides  the 
sacred  jDoem  underneath,  the  lineaments  come  out,  fragmen- 
tary but  clear,  of  the  real  human  life  unique  in  its  beauty  and 
its  power.  All  the  reverential  interest  awakened  in  the  reader 
of  the  synoptic  gospels,  all  that  fastens  on  his  memory  by 
shaming  his  littleness  and  winning  his  affections,  all  that 
sacred  art  most  aspires  to  paint, — the  child  in  the  temple,  tlie 
synagogue  at  Nazareth,  the  blessing  on  the  infants,  the 
counsel  of  perfection  to  the  rich  youth,  the  preference  of  the 
woman's  penitence  to  the  Pharisee's  righteousness,  the  swift 
transition  from  the  calm  of  the  last  supper,  through  the 
anguish  of  Gethsemane  to  the  via  dolorosa, — all  are  scenes 
from  the  interior  of  an  experience  intelligible  through  our 
own  ;  and  owe  their  subduing  influence  to  the  characteristics 
of  a  surpassing  personality.  However  modified  by  admixture 
01  supernatural  elements  in  the  narrative,  the  essential  ground- 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON   OF  JESUS.        423 

v>-ork  of  its  marvellous  appeal  is  biographical  and  human  ;  and 
fitly  claims  to  be  the  story  of  the  "  Son  o/Man." 

That  the  apostle  Paul  never  once  uses  this  touching  phrase 
is  significant  of  a  very  different  state  of  mind.  "  Born  out  of 
due  time,"  called  into  his  new  life  by  a  voice  out  of  the 
invisible,  he  knew  not  the  Jesus  of  history,  but  the  immortal 
Conqueror  of  death,  and  construed  him  in  thought,  not  by 
individual  affection  and  remembered  traits,  but  by  inward 
revelation  and  ideal  faith,  both  of  them  concentrated  on  what 
that  beloved  "  Son  of  God  "  already  was  in  his  present  heaven, 
and  hereafter  was  to  be  and  do.  What  he  had  been  in  his 
earthly  part  was  lost  in  eclipse  behind  those  transcendent 
relations  in  which  henceforth  the  whole  interest  of  the  world- 
drama  lay.  So  that  the  Pauline  Gospel  thinks  itself  out  free 
from  the  restraints  of  personal  memory,  and  identifies  the 
crucified  and  risen  prophet  with  the  new  type  of  regenerate 
humanity  that  shall  realize  the  Divine  idea. 

In  both  these  forms  of  doctrine,  the  respective  disciples 
look  up  to  Christ  as  the  bearer  of  divine  endowments  at  an 
elevation  far  above  them.  But  these  endowments  are 
conferred  upon  him :  in  the  Petrine  gospel,  by  miraculous 
investiture  :  in  the  Pauline,  by  preordination  of  the  creative 
will  "  when  the  fulness  of  time  should  come  "  for  the  "  spiri- 
tual Adam  "  to  be  revealed  from  heaven  as  "  the  Son  of  God," 
and  show  the  meaning  of  the  first  "natural  Adam,"  who 
himself  was  no  son  of  man.  Thus,  both  these  Christologies 
are  strictly  anthropological:  not  to  the  Galileans  only  was 
Christ  simply  Man  :  to  the  Gentile  apostle  also  his  essential 
nature  was  measured  in  its  pre-existence,  as  in  its  post-exist- 
ence, by  the  human  standard, — or  rather,  was  invoked  to 
supply  it, — the  truly  "  first-born  among  many  brethren." 
Though  living  among  the  angels,  he  was  not  one  of  them  ; 
but  remained  linked  to  our  kind,  "  touched  with  the  feeling  of 
our  infirmities,"  consoling  the  humiliation  he  has  escaped, 
and  by  the  first-fruits  of  his  spirit  drawing  us  to  the  glory  he 
has  reached.  In  the  order  of  this  faith,  he  is  followed  from 
earth  to  heaven,  from  the  shadow  of  the  last  sacrifice  to  the 
light  of  eternal  Love  :  but  only  as  the  forerunner  of  the  race 
he  represents.     In  him,  humanity  rises  from  its  low  bcghi- 


424  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

nings  towards  its  perfect  end,  and  reaches  some  fitness  for 
society  diviner  than  its  own.  The  direction  of  thought  in 
these  theories  is  from  below  upwards ;  and  its  range  lies 
entirely  between  the  mferior  and  superior  limits  of  human 
capability. 

It  is  impossible  to  open  the  Gospel  which  bears  ths  name 
of  John,  without  feeling  ourselves  in  a  totally  distinct  world 
from  this.  The  point  of  departure  is  no  longer  (as  in  Matthew 
and  Luke)  the  home  of  the  Nativity,  or  (as  in  Mark)  the 
baptism  in  the  Jordan,  or  (as  with  Paul)  the  death  on  the 
cross,  or  anything  else  that  lies  in  history.  The  story  opens 
in  quite  another  field  of  time,  indefinitely  prior,  not  only  to 
the  life  of  Jesus,  but  to  the  creation  of  the  visible  universe 
itself :  it  plants  us  amid  the  silent  eternity  ere  yet  there  was 
anything  but  God.  There,  as  its  "  beginning,"  it  introduces 
us  to  an  interior  view  of  the  Divine  life,  and  shows  it  to  be 
not  an  Absolute  Solitude,  but  a  relation  between  two  varieties 
of  spiritual  being :  one,  the  infinite  and  unapproachable 
Essence,  for  ever  hid  from  all  inferior  apprehension  :  the 
other,  the  explicit  Thought  and  manifesting  Word,  which  is 
like  him  as  Son  to  Father,  and  may  be  the  organ  for  breaking 
the  ancient  silence,  and  putting  forth  a  universe  to  take  his 
invisibility  away.  This  is  the  scene, — if  such  we  can  call 
that  transcendent  retreat, — on  which  the  curtain  of  the  drama 
rises;  and  this  associate  of  God  "before  all  worlds"  is  the 
personage  whose  history  it  proposes  to  exhibit,  with  at  least 
the  moral  unity  which  never  changes  place  or  time  except  to 
link  together  the  beginning,  the  middle,  and  the  consummation 
of  an  eternal  purpose.  Two  stages  of  activity  are  spread  for 
him  as  the  steps  by  which  he  passes  to  the  central  incident  of 
his  existence  :  he  called  up  the  natural  cosmos,  to  hint  by  a 
finite  sign  how  much  behind  could  not  be  signified  :  and  he 
came  in  transient  visits  of  revelation  and  prophecy,  to  the  people 
•who,  as  the  channels  of  promise,  were  more  especially  "  his 
own."  But  to  be  this  divine  Agent  for  nature,  and  divine 
Agent  for  history,  could  not  accomplish  his  suj^reme  end ; 
and,  to  realize  this  at  last,  he  assumed  our  humanity,  became 
incarnate  in  the  person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and,  after 
tarrying  among  men  for  awhile  as  the  visible  impersonation 


Chap.  IL]       THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        425 

of  the  infinite  "  grace  and  truth,"  returned  to  "  the  bosom  of 
the  Father  "  whence  he  came  ;  not,  however,  without  sending 
the  Holy  Spirit  to  take  his  place  below,  to  continue  his  work, 
and  blend  into  one  organism  the  children  of  God  in  both 
worlds.  From  this  mere  outline  it  is  evident  that  here  we 
have  the  story,  not  of  ascending  humanity,  but  of  descending 
Divinity  ;  of  a  god  entering  into  the  disguise  of  an  earthly 
life,  and,  when  the  mantle  has  fallen,  resuming  his  home  on 
high.  The  movement  of  the  writer's  thought  is  from  above 
downwards,  its  range  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  time  ; 
and  his  interest  in  the  biography  he  follows  out  is  not  so 
much  in  the  human  incidents  and  experiences,  which  only 
mask  the  reality,  as  in  the  vestiges  of  irrepressible  glory 
which  escaped  in  gleams  with  every  gust  that  stirred  the 
robe  of  his  humility.  The  Christ  of  this  gospel  has  no  infancy, 
no  youth  of  growing  wisdom  and  stature,  no  dawning  sus- 
picions of  a  sacred  call  mocked  by  taunting  voices  from  the 
desert  of  temptation,  no  deepening  of  self-devotion  by  conflict 
and  widening  of  spiritual  affections  through  a  life  of  tender 
mercy,  till  all  that  is  pure  on  earth  or  in  heaven  is  drawn 
into  his  love.  Nor  does  he  here  begin,  from  "  a  day  of  small 
things,"  with  a  set  of  first  disciples  who  scarce  know  why 
they  follow  him,  who  rebuke  as  often  as  they  trust  him,  and 
who  but  slowly  emerge  into  the  feeling,  though  not  the  under- 
standing, of  his  greatness.  These  gradations  of  human 
experience  are  here  unknown.  Not  even  his  enemies,  with 
all  their  disputings,  are  allowed  to  doiiht :  in  spite  of  their 
pretence  he  tells  them  "  Ye  both  know  me,  and  know  whence 
I  am."  On  them,  as  on  his  followers,  it  is  with  a  sudden 
])urst  that  his  Divine  nature  breaks,  and  is  self-revealed.  This 
third  form  of  Christology  is  in  no  respect  a  development  of 
the  others,  simply  advancing  a  little  further  in  the  same 
direction.  It  is  no  longer  antltrojiolor/iral,  lifting  a  human 
being  into  exaltation  ;  it  is  theological,  bringing  a  Divine  l)eing 
into  incarnation.  It  is  a  theory  starting  from  the  opposite 
end  of  thought,  worked  out  from  diHerent  assumptions,  by 
the  methods  of  a  different  school ;  nor  do  the  highest  expres- 
sions of  Paul  (even  if  we  refer  to  him  the  epistles  of  later  and 
doubtful   authorship)    respecting   the   heavenly   humanity  of 


426  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

Christ  afford  any  steps  of  gradation  between  the  Son  of 
David  that  went  up  on  high  and  this  "Person  "  of  the  godhead 
who  came  down  below.  Take  away  the  manhood,  of  Christ, 
not  as  his  temporary  accident,  but  as  his  supreme  essence  and 
the  whole  idea  of  his  celestial  existence,  and  there  is  not  an 
argument  or  exposition  of  the  Apostle  Paul's  which  will  not 
be  simply  stripped  of  all  its  sense  and  point,  and  reduced  to 
an  assemblage  of  incoherent  thoughts.  And  on  the  other  hand, 
take  away  the  godhead  of  Christ,  as  the  entire  real  meaning 
of  even  his  ministry  in  Palestine,  and  there  is  not  an  inci- 
dent or  a  speech  in  the  fourth  gospel  which  does  not  lose  its 
significance,  and  leave  on  the  mind  the  hazy  impression  of 
a  half-understood  discourse  in  a  foreign  tongue.  To  carry  the 
same  key  to  both  is  only  to  make  sure  of  oj^ening  neither. 

This  contrast  of  doctrine  implies  a  separating  chasm  of  time 
and  circumstance  ;  and  the  very  language  of  the  new  theology 
tells  us  where  to  seek  it ;  for  it  is  the  nomenclature  and 
thought  of  the  Platonic  Judaism ;  nor  could  the  Proem  have 
been  written  where  Philo  was  unknown. 

When  Paul  wrote,  Palestine  was  still  the  fatherland  and 
home  of  Israel,  where  the  national  sanctuary  yet  stood  ;  and 
here  and  there  in  the  village  synagogues  where  prayer  was 
wont  to  be  made,  some  venerable  man  might  still  remember 
hearing  the  gracious  voice  of  the  prophet  of  Nazareth.  The 
conditions  under  which  the  "  common  tradition "  was 
formed,  conditions  of  locality,  society,  sect,  ritual  and  faith, 
were  undisturbed,  and  left  his  brief  career  an  unforgotten 
episode  in  contemporary  history.  To  the  apostle  who  never 
saw  him  he  had  been  known,  in  his  earthly  life,  only  as  a 
provincial  enthusiast,  a  disturber  of  the  people,  an  assailant 
of  the  priests,  a  disparager  of  the  law,  and  his  figure  would 
appear  conspicuous  as  an  example  of  the  fanatical  excitability 
of  the  time.  Throughout  the  apostolic  age,  the  whole  scene, 
as  it  lay  before  the  Christian  imagination,  was  redolent  of  the 
soil  and  air  of  the  holy  land  ;  and  the  incidents  that  filled 
it  found  their  occasion  in  the  local  habits  and  relations,  and 
their  meaning  in  the  current  beliefs  and  dominant  passions 
of  the  population.  The  anthropological  Christology  belongs 
to  the  time  ^vhen  the  Jewish  State,  however  dependent,  was 


Chap,  ll.l       THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        427 

still  guardian  of  its  theocratic  institutions  and  monotheistic 
faith,  with  all  the  accessory  fictions  and  usages  that  clustered 
round  them :  "  Beelzebub "  is  available  in  argument : 
"demons"  are  quite  "familiar  spirits:"  Pharisees  make 
broad  their  phylacteries  :  Sadducees  draw  sceptic  quibbles 
from  the  levirate  marriage :  lej^ers  bring  their  entreaties  as 
near  as  they  dare  from  their  sad  exile  :  dilemmas  are  started 
about  the  tribute  money :  and  the  strangest  Messianic  cloud 
of  dreams  broods  over  the  near  future  of  the  world. 

When  the  fourth  evangelist  wrote  (who  knows  nothing  of 
these  things),  the  whole  of  this  scene,  with  all  its  characteristic 
ideas,  had  vanished  from  life  and  broken  into  fragments  of 
memory.  Jerusalem  captive,  the  temple  razed,  the  priesthood 
banished,  the  ritual  and  law  superseded,  the  nation,  in  its 
local  organization,  practically  dissolved,  the  Semitic 
Judaism,  whether  with  or  without  Messiah,  had  lost 
its  central  seat :  its  people  were  dispersed,  its  problems 
silenced,  its  promises  discredited.  The  vitality  which  it 
vacated  had  passed  to  a  new  dynasty,  of  Hellenic  Judaism,  in 
Alexandria, — an  influence  purely  speculative  and  theosophic, 
but  powerful  as  a  solvent  for  taking  up  and  diffusing  through 
all  thought  the  most  quickening  elements  of  Hebrew  mono- 
theism. How  a  Jew  had  prepared  this  solvent  in  his  doctrine 
of  the  Logos,  and  how  he  had  applied  that  conception  to  both 
God  in  heaven  and  man  on  earth,  without  either  dividing  it 
or  confounding  them,  has  been  shown  in  the  preceding 
chapter.  It  remained  only  for  some  Christian  thinker  to  let 
the  Divine  Logos  play  the  part  of  soul  to  a  human  body,  and 
use  the  living  mask  through  the  scenes  of  an  earthly  drama  : 
and,  thus  interpreted,  the  story  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  at  once 
became  a  Theophany.  And  this  is  the  purpose  the  Johannine 
author  begins  by  avowing,  and  ends  with  accomplishing. 

The  link  which  connects  the  two  Christologies  is  found  in 
the  phrase  "  Son  of  God."  To  the  Pauline  Christian  the 
risen  Jesus  was  declared  in  heaven  the  unique  "  Son  of  God." 
To  Philo,  the  Logos  was  the  "  only  Son  of  God."  The  fourth 
evangelist  had  but  to  combine  the  two,  in  order  to  unify  the 
person  of  Jesus  with  the  Logos,  and  make  over  to  him  the 
same  divine  attributes  and  relations.     Philo's  doctrine  was 


428  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

cosmical :  Paul's  was  Messianic  :  the  evangelist's  was  both. 
In  either  case  the  term  itself  (Son  of  God)  may  here  and 
there  be  used  with  more  or  less  of  the  full  meaning  of  the 
filial  relation  which  it  denotes  ;  and,  in  the  Pauline  letters,  as  in 
all  popular  speech  and  writing,  is  far  from  carrying  the  whole. 
Father  and  Son  cannot  be,  without  two  conditions, — an 
order  of  derivation,  and  an  identity  or  likeness  of  kind.  Did 
we  take  account  of  the  first  of  these  alone,  God  might  be 
called  the  Father  indifferently  of  all  that  has  proceeded  from 
his  will,  of  men  and  angels,  of  seas  and  stars.  And  in  this 
way  Philo,  though  not  consistently,  styles  the  visible  universe 
"  the  only  Son  "  and  "  the  first-born  Son  "  of  God.  Usually, 
however,  simple  derivation  without  sameness  of  personal  type, 
is  not  regarded  as  entitling  to  so  high  a  name  ;  and  a  distinc- 
tion is  drawn  between  the  mere  living  creature  which  is 
fabricated  as  an  object  of  Divine  invention,  and  the  child 
of  God  who  comes  into  existence  as  the  expression  of  his 
nature,  and  whose  lineaments  betray  a  kindred  with  himself. 
Still,  even  in  this  restricted  sense  the  term  would  still  em- 
brace the  "  whole  family  of  minds,"  none  being  destitute  of 
spiritual  capacities  which  hold  them  in  divine  relations ;  and 
it  is  exultingly  claimed  for  Christian  men  by  Paul,  and  by 
Jesus  himself  for  all  whose  affections  repeat  the  universal 
Love.  With  the  same  idea,  only  further  reduced  in  latitude, 
so  as  to  leave  all  finite  analogies  behind,  is  the  phrase  "  Son 
of  God  "  applied  to  the  pre-existing  "  Word  "  in  the  fourth 
Gospel.  The  oneness  with  God  which  it  means  to  mark 
is  not  such  resembling  reflex  of  the  Divine  thought  and 
character  as  men  or  angels  may  attain,  but  identity  of 
essence,  constituting  him  not  godlike  alone,  but  substantially 
God.  Others  may  be  children  of  God  in  a  moral  sense :  but, 
by  this  right  of  elemental  nature,  none  but  he  :  he  is,  herein, 
the  only  Son,  so  little  separate,  so  close  to  the  inner  Divine 
life  which  he  expresses,  that  he  is  "  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father."*  This  language  undoubtedly  describes  a  great  deal 
more  than  such  harmony  of  will,  and  sympathy  of  affection, 
as  may  subsist  between  finite  obedience  and  its  infinite 
Inspirer :  it  denotes  two  natures  homogeneous,  entirely  one, 

*  Jolin  i.  18. 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        429 

and  both  so  essential  to  the  Godhead  that  neither  can  be 
omitted  from  any  truth  you  speak  of  it.  So  completely 
reciprocal  is  their  relation  over  the  whole  sphere  of  its  extent 
that  there  is  nothing  left  to  divide  between  them :  "all 
things  that  the  Father  hath  are  mine;*  "all  mine  are 
thine,  and  thine  are  mine."!  So  identically  applicable  to 
both  are  the  eternal  laws  of  God's  own  life,  that  the  acts 
and  exemptions  of  the  one  repeat  themselves  in  the  other. 
In  this  connection  it  is  instructive  to  compare  the 
answer  of  Jesus,  as  reported  by  the  Synoptists,  to  the 
charge  of  Sabbath-breaking,  t  with  that  which  the  fourth 
Gospel  ascribes  to  him.§  His  plea  in  the  former, — that  "the 
Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the  Sabbath," — 
urges  that  the  institution,  being  provided  for  the  true  wants 
of  man,  must  bend  to  his  obvious  needs,  and  seek  the  ultimate 
rule  for  its  observance  from  the  constitution  of  his  nature 
and  the  emergencies  of  his  life.  If  Jesus,  in  clenching  the 
argument  with  the  words  "therefore  the  Son  of  Man  is  lord 
of  the  Sabbath,"  meant  to  use  this  title  of  Jdiusclf,  it  was 
clearly  as  the  ]:)ro2)]ict  oflmmanity,  and  on  behalf  of  its  "  weary 
and  heavy-laden,"  that  he  claims  his  free  action  in  the 
Sabbath  fields.  In  the  fourth  Gospel,  do  we  find  him  thus 
taking  his  stand  upon  the  human  level '?  On  the  contrary, 
he  carries  the  Sabbath  at  once  to  the  transcendent  sphere 
which  knows  no  rest  and  can  give  it  noplace;  and  justifies 
himself  by  the  tests  of  that  world.  There,  beyond  the  con- 
ditions of  measured  Time,  the  Infinite  God  knows  no  Sab- 
bath and  never  pauses  on  his  everlasting  way  ;  and  the  rule 
v/hich  flows  from  his  nature  no  less  embraces  the  Son,  to 
whom  also,  even  upon  earth,  all  days  are  sacred  alike  :  "my 
Father  worketh  thus  far,  and  I  also  work."  Nay,  there  is 
more  than  reciprocation,  such  as  may  take  place  between  two 
harmonious  but  separated  beings ;  it  is  merged  m  inward 
unity  :  "  the  Father  is  in  me,  and  I  in  him  :  "i|  '"'  I  and  my 
Father  are  one."  ^  They  belong  for  ever  to  one  another, 
without  the  thought  or  possibility  of  independent  life  ;  the 
Father  as  indivisible  from  the  Son  as  from  himself :  the  Son 

•  John  xvi.  15.  t  xvii.  10. 

X  lsla.it.  xii.  1-8.     Mavl^  ii.  23-2S.     Taiko  vi.  1  5. 

§  John  V.  16,  17.  II  X.  3i.  "^  x.  SD. 


430  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

SO  surrenclsred  to  the  Father  as  to  have  no  resort  to  his 
consciousness  of  distinct  personahty  :  each  discovers  but  him- 
self in  that  which  the  other  is. 

If  the  evangehst  had  set  forth  these  thoughts  as  Ins  own 
interpretation  of  what  the  term  '  Son  of  God '  imphes,  if  he 
had  simply  taken  for  granted  that  it  could  mean  nothing  less 
than  the  Deity  of  Christ,  we  should  have  recognized  at  once 
the  production  of  a  waiter  in  the  second  Century,  and  settled 
his  more  exact  chronological  place  by  comparison  with  the 
Christology  of  Justin  Martyr  and  his  contemporaries.  But 
when  the  doctrinal  conceptions  propounded  in  his  Proem  and 
in  his  interspersed  reflections  take  possession  of  his  narrative 
also,  and  issue  in  the  most  startling  form  from  the  lips  of 
Jesus  himself,  and  are  upheld  by  him  in  sharp  dialectic  with 
the  scandalized  Jews,  we  are  asked  to  put  back  their  his- 
torical place  by  three  or  four  generations,  and,  instead  of 
treating  them  as  theological  commentary  on  a  traditional 
past,  to  accept  them  as  personal  features  of  a  most  authorita- 
tive biography.  Is  it  possible  to  do  this?  Not  unless  we 
utterly  discredit  the  Synoptists'  picture  of  the  whole  stage 
and  time  of  the  ministry  of  Jesus.  Both  in  their  narrative 
and  in  the  fourth  Gospel  the  phrase  '  Son  of  God '  expresses 
the  highest  claim  set  up  for  Jesus  and  the  greatest  occasion  for 
offence.  But  how  different  in  the  two  cases  are  the  reports 
of  its  effect !  If  in  the  former  it  brought  him  to  the  cross, 
it  was  not  as  a  gainsayer  of  the  Religion  of  Israel,  but 
politically,  as  a  '  King  of  the  Jews,'  troublesome  to  Eome : 
nor  did  the  belief  strip  him  of  the  modest  synonym  '  Son  of 
Man;'  it  indicated  him  only  as  Messiah.  On  the  other  hand, 
no  sooner  does  the  Johannine  Jesus  express  the  claim  of 
Divine  Sonship,  and  appeal  to  what  he  '  does  in  his  Father's 
name,'*  than  the  Jews  'take  up  stones  to  stone  him  '  f  and 
make  Solomon's  porch  resound  with  their  cries,  that  he  sets 
himself  up  as  God's  equal,  and  so  blasphemes  the  national 
monotheism.  The  evangelist  supplies  him  with  an  answer 
which,  founded  on  their  scriptures,  is  valid /or  them,  viz.,  that 
the  word  '  God,'  and,  a  fortiori,  the  phrase  '  Son  of  God,'  need 
mean  no  more  than  one  "  to  whom  the  word  of  God  came;  "  | 

*  John  X.  25.  t  s.  31. 


Chap.  II. 1       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        431 

but  at  the  same  time  plainly  intimated  that  it  is  not  in  this 
lower  sense  that  Jesus  really  speaks,  but,  as  implied  in  his. 
words,  "  I  and  the  Father  are  one,"*  and  "  the  Father  is  in 
me  and  I  in  the  Father,"!  in  the  far  higher  sense  which 
they  impugn  and  cannot  understand. 

The  very  existence  of  this  controversy  was  evidently  im- 
j^ossible  till  the  Divine  Logos  had  taken  possession  of  the 
term  '  Son  of  God,'  and  given  it  a  theological  in  place  of  a 
simply  Messianic   significance.     Prior  to  the  time  when  the 

*  Father '  and  the  '  Son '  were  both  within  the  Godhead, 
there  could  be  no  complaint  of  tampering  with  the  Divine 
Unity :    an   anthropological   predicate,    however    armed  with 

*  signs  and  wonders,'  cannot  encroach  on  the  sovereignty  of 
the  Most  High.  The  pure  calm  Theism  of  the  Synoptists, 
common  to  the  disciples  and  the  opponents  of  Jesus,  and 
disturbed  by  no  imputation  of  rehgious  disloyalty,  is  un- 
doubtedly historical.  The  differences  on  which  the  narratives 
and  their  discourses  turn  are  differences  between  two  varieties 
of  Israelite,  both  alike  true  to  the  same  ancient  worship.  The 
recurring  topic  in  the  fourth  Gospel,  that  the  Sonship  of 
Christ  militates  against  the  Unity  of  God,  with  the  polemic  of 
attack  and  defence,  came  to  the  front  only  as  the  tendency  to 
glorify  the  person  of  Christ  reached  its  highest  stages  ;  and 
in  the  form  assigned  to  it  by  the  evangelist,  could  not  present 
itself  till  the  Alexandrine  philosophy  had  turned  the  gospel 
history  into  a  theosophy,  and  the  elevation  of  Christ  into  an 
object  of  w^orship  had  completely  severed  Christians  from  Jews 
as  votaries  of  irreconcilable  religions,  t 

Intense  as  the  language  of  identity  is  betw'een  the  Logos 
and  God,  amounting  to  an  apotheosis  of  the  '  Son,'  it  nuist 
not  be  taken  as  equivalent  to  the  assertion  of  '  co-squalit}^ '  in 
the  Church  creed.  The  evangelist,  in  saying  that  the  relation 
subsisted  "  in  the  beginning,"  only  means  to  place  us  at  a 
point  prior  to  creation,  and  does  not  commit  himself  to  the 
eternal  existence  of  the  Word  ;  and  probably,  like  Philo,  he 
conceived  of  him  as  mtermediate,  in  posteriority  as  well  as  in 

•  Johnx.  30.  t  X-  38.. 

t  Sec  this  argumcut  admirably  enforced  by  J.  H.  HoltzmaiiD,  iu  his  Lclir- 
■buch  d.  hist.  krit.  Eiuleitung  iu  das  2s.  T.  pp.  id,  4G5. 


432  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

agency,  between  the  Infinite  God  and  his  finite  universe.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  the  Son,  whether  originated  in  time  or  not,  is 
intrinsically  subordinate  to  the  Father,  and  the  very  unity 
between  them  carries  in  it  this  relation  of  dependence.  The 
initiative  is  ever  with  the  Father  as  absolute  cause,  the  effect 
only  with  the  Son  as  agent  relatively  to  the  world.  "  The 
Son  can  do  nothing  of  himself  but  what  he  sees  the  Father 
doing :  for  what  things  soever  He  doeth,  these  the  Son  also 
doeth  in  like  manner."*  The  divine  "  Word  "  cannot  speak 
save  what  the  divine  Thought  may  give  him  to  say  :  "I  have 
not  spoken  of  myself,  but  the  Father  which  sent  me  hath 
given  me  a  commission  what  I  should  say  and  what  I  should 
speak :  "  "the  things  therefore  which  I  speak,  even  as  he 
said  unto  me,  so  I  speak:"!  "I  speak  the  things  which  I 
have  seen  with  my  Father:"  "I  have  told  you  the  truth 
which  I  have  heard  from  God."t  He  does  not  come  of 
himself,  but  is  no  less  sent  into  the  world  than  the  disciples 
whom  he  commissions  as  his  ambassadors  in  turn  :  "  As  thou 
didst  send  me  into  the  world,  even  so  send  I  them  into  the 
world."§  Nay,  more  ;  the  distinctive  glories  embodied  in  his 
person,  the  "truth,"  the  "life,"  the  "light,"  conspicuous 
in  him,  are  not  his  own.  If  he  is  '  the  truth,'  his  disciples 
"  know  that  all  things  whatsoever  thou  hast  given  me  are 
from  thee,  for  the  word  which  thou  gavest  me  I  have  given 
unto  them ;  and  they  know  of  a  truth  that  I  came  forth  from 
thee,  and  have  beheved  that  thou  didst  send  me."  ||  If  he  is  the 
life-giver,  it  is  because  the  "  Father  who  hath  life  in  himself 
gave  to  the  Son  also  to  have  Hfe  in  himself :  "IT  "  as  the  living 
Father  sent  me  and  I  live  to  the  Father,  so  he  that  eateth  me 
shall  live  because  of  me."**  If  he  is  the  Hght  of  the  world, 
and  if,  when  he  leaves  it,  he  passes  into  purer  brightness  still, 
it  is  an  investiture  of  glory  which,  before  the  world  was,  the 
Father  imparted  and  the  Father  would  renew.  The  most 
intimate  terms  of  equal  union  stop  short  of  absolute  Unity  of 
being,  and  break  into  expression  of  relation  and  distinction : 
we  read  "  All  things  that  the  Father  hath  are  mine  ;  "ft  but 

='  John  V.  19.  t  xii.  49,  50.  t  viii.  38,  40. 

§  xvii.  18.  II  xvii.  7,  8.  IT  V.  26. 

"*  vi.  57.  tt  xvi.  15, 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        43 


jj 


never  "  All  things  that  the  Father  h  am  I :  "  the  promise  of 
the  Spirit,  and  its  dispensing,  comes  from  both  ;  but  of  God 
alone  it  is  said,  He  "is  Spirit."  The  very  blending  of  their 
natures,  which  seems  so  intimate,  is  with  a  difference  :  the 
"  Father  is  in  the  Son,"*  as  the  greater  in  the  less  ;  ("  the 
Father  is  greater  than  !.")+  leaving  nothing  which  escapes 
sanctification  in  the  nature  occupied,  but  not  exhausting  the 
whole  infinitude  of  the  indwelling  Deity.  The  Son  is  in  the 
Father,  as  the  less  in  the  greater,  where  he  finds  the  ground 
of  his  being,  in  coalescence  with  which  is  his  only  power 
and  his  perfect  rest,  and  apart  from  which  his  integral 
existence  would  be  gone.  Thus,  even  in  this  high  and  mystic 
doctrine,  the  co-equality  variously  gives  way.  The  relation 
cannot  be  turned  round;  and  though  the  Son  is  of  the  Supreme 
essence  and  an  intrinsic  function  of  the  Divine  life  and  love, 
the  Father  jDreoccupies  and  for  ever  keeps  the  name  of  "  the 
true  God,"  and  is  the  invisible  perfection  which  the  Word  is 
commissioned  to  manifest. 

From  the  relation  of  the  Logos  upwards  towards  God,  we 
may  turn  to  contemplate  the  relation  downwards  towards  the 
world  which  he  becomes  incarnate  to  visit.  "What  kind  of 
scene  does  it  present  to  him  ?  It  is  the  very  world  which  he 
created  in  the  execution  of  the  Divine  idea :  does  it  reflect 
that  idea  ?  and  is  the  work  of  his  hand  such  as  he  is  well- 
pleased  to  behold?  Had  the  Logos  been  commissioned  to 
look  after  the  world  which  he  had  set  up,  to  uphold  as  well 
as  institute  it,  and  animate  it  as  its  indwelling  principle  of 
thought,  some  conformity  must  surely  be  found  between  the 
perfect  source  and  the  finite  product.  The  evangelist,  in 
spite  of  his  leanings  to  the  conception  of  Immanence,  strangely 
gives  to  his  Divine  "  Son  "  less  to  do  with  the  world  he  has 
made,  than  the  apostle  Paul  assigns  to  his  pre-existcnIi7/»/?wn 
Son,  the  spiritual  Adam,  who  at  least  accompanied  the 
providential  history  of  Israel  and  left  his  traces  there.  After 
invoking  an  infinitely  greater  agent  (Philo's  "  second  God  ") 
for  spreading  the  scene  of  the  world  drama,  the  fourth  Gospel 
silently  withdraws  it  from  all  sacred  guardianship  and 
direction  ;  so  that  its  Creator,   on  returning  from  the  bosom 

*  John  xvii.  21.  .      .  t  ^iv,  2S. 

F    F 


434  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

of  the  Father,  finds  his  work  under  the  dominion  of  an  anti- 
god.  In  descending  from  the  heavenly  to  the  earthly  sphere 
of  life,  he  invades  the  territory  of  an  enemy,  and  has  to 
breakup  the  administration  of  "the  Prince  of  darkness," 
who  in  this  Gospel  alone  is  acknowledged  as  in  possession 
under  the  title  of  "  Prince  of  this  world."*  Plow  a  cosmos 
set  up  by  "  the  best  of  causes  "  came  to  be  overrun  with  the 
worst  of  effects  ;  how,  especially,  a  Creator  absolutely  good 
could  include  in  his  work  a  spiritual  being  of  will  absolutely 
evil,  and  free  to  quicken  all  possible  seeds  of  evil  in  others,  is 
left  unexplained.  Certain  it  is  that  the  author  neither  regarded 
Satan  as  an  uncreated  rival  of  the  true  God,  nor  supposed 
him /a//c/i  from  "a  first  estate"  of  pure  obedience;  but  in 
his  view  of  the  world  of  experience  stationed  him,  at  the 
opening,  as  the  true  Jons  et  origo  of  moral  alienation  from  the 
government  of  God.  I  say  "morar^  alienation,  because  the 
author  does  not  lay  to  his  charge  the  ijhysical  maladies  and 
mental  disorders  which  in  the  other  evangelists  are  referred 
to  the  "evil  spirits"  and  treated  by  methods  of  exorcism; 
but  he  is  at  one  with  them  in  saying  that  "  Satan  put  it  into 
the  heart  of  Judas  Iscariot "  to  play  the  traitor. f  To  the 
author's  religious  consciousness,  refined  by  more  than  a  cen- 
tury of  Christian  thought  and  life,  the  actual  world  of  human 
experience  presented  itself  as  a  scene  of  intensest  contrasts  of 
pure  evil  and  pure  good,  no  more  capable  of  blending  than 
two  rival  wills  ;  and  personally  concentrated  respectively  in 
the  8<a73oAoc,  the  father  of  lies  and  murderer  at  the  outset,  and 
in  the  Logos,  the  Son  of  God,  who  having  been  with  him  from 
the  beginning,  brought  the  truth,  the  light,  the  life,  the  love 
of  heaven  to  "  his  own,"  if  such  there  were  whom  it  could 
reach  through  the  darkness  of  the  earth. 

This  intense  moral  dualism  in  the  Johannine  writings, 
which  allows  no  gradations,  drives  all  antitheses  into  contra- 
dictions, and  invokes  God  and  devil  to  settle  every  disputed 
cause,  doiibtless  indicates  that  the  interval  had  become 
practically  hopeless  between  the  spiritual  ideal  of  life  and 
character  reached  by  the  Christian  conscience,  and  the  low 
types   of    motive   and   conduct  into    which  the  unconverted 

*  Jolin  :di.  31,  siv.  30,  xvi.  11.  f  xiii.  2,  27. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.         4^,5 

Judaism  and  heathenism  had  set.  The  Christian  mission  had 
carried  its  appeal  into  both  their  fields  for  now  three 
generations,  and  had  drawn  thence  the  great  mass  of  the 
baptized  ;  but  had  long  speni]  all  its  available  persuasion  on 
the  former  and  seen  itself  scorned  as  an  apostate ;  and  from 
the  latter  had,  it  would  seem,  attracted  the  front  rank  of  its 
susceptible  and  waiting  minds  into  its  own  communion,  till 
the  supply  had  flagged,  and  the  residuary  paganism  spake  to 
ever  meaner  passions  and  sillier  dreams,  and  to  every  pure 
eye  seemed  simply  an  ungodliness.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  an  Alexandrian  Christian  in  the  fourth  decade  of  the  second 
century,  all  the  Divine  presence  and  expression  in  life  might 
well  seem  to  be  sheltered  within  the  Church,  beyond  which  was 
a  heterogeneous  anarchy  of  selfish,  fleshly,  devilish  elements  ; 
the  sanctuary  of  the  former  being  in  the  world,  though  not  of 
the  world,  which  was  surrendered  to  the  latter.  This  extreme 
opposition,  due  to  his  historical  position,  the  author  carries 
back  into  his  reading  of  the  religion  in  its  birth  and  revelation 
through  the  personal  visit  of  the  Son  of  God.  Hence,  both 
the  lights  and  the  shadows  of  his  picture  are  painted  in  with 
the  colours  of  another  age,  and  give  a  false  kind  of  glory  to 
the  leading  figure,  while  flinging  the  forms  of  opponents  into 
too  black  a  shade  of  wrong. 

This  would  be  a  serious  fault  in  a  production  announcing 
itself  as  simply  and  strictly  historical ;  but  wears  another 
aspect  in  a  selection  of  excerpts  from  a  larger  store,  avowedly 
made  for  a  purpose  of  religious  persuasion  :  "  many  other 
signs  did  Jesus  in  the  presence  of  his  disciples,  which  are  not 
written  in  this  book ;  but  these  are  written  that  ye  may 
believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God ;  and  that 
believing  ye  may  have  life  in  his  name."*  The  author  who 
knows  Christianity  in  its  spiritual  development  and  could 
measure  it  by  its  fruits,  might  legitimately  wish  to  reflect  back 
its  highest  characteristics  on  its  inconspicuous  beginnings, 
and  find  its  essence  and  its  future,  while  as  yet  they  lay  hid  : 
and  having  possession  of  the  secret  in  his  conception  of  "  the 
Word  made  flesh,"  he  brings  its  intense  light  to  bear  upon  the 
evangelistic  story,  and  detects  its  vestiges  in  many  a  passage 

•  John  XX-.  30,  31. 

F    F    2 


436  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV.. 

ill  understood  before.  His  gospel  is  thus  set  forth,  not  as 
either  a  new  or  a  supplementary  biography,  but  as  a  theo- 
logical construction  of  actions  and  events  on  record  as  facts, 
yet  unappreciated  in  significance.  To  reveal  their  transcen- 
dent character,  to  lift  them  out  of  the  plane  of  earthly  things 
and  refer  them  to  their  source  Divine  or  devilish,  and  make 
them  tell  their  inner  meaning,  was  the  very  purpose  of  the. 
author.  His  Proem  gives  notice  at  starting  of  the  very 
thoughts  which  he  intends  to  read  into  the  facts  and  colloquies 
as  he  relates  them.  And  his  selection  or  reconstruction  of 
historical  material  from  previous  evangels  is  so  made  as  to 
vindicate  for  the  seeming  "  Jesus  of  Nazareth  "  the  very  pre- 
dicates attached  in  the  Proem  to  the  Divine  Logos  :  to  exhibit 
him  as  Life-giver,  Light-bringer,  Spirit-quickener,  Truth- 
essence  and  Truth-reader.  Similarly,  the  selection  of  all  that 
opposes  itself  to  him  is  so  made  as  to  exemplify  only  utter 
perversity  or  hardened  wickedness,  to  the  serious  injury  of 
historical  verisimilitude,  and  a  deterioration  still  more  serious 
of  the  moral  portraiture  of  Christ  in  controversy  with  perplexed 
gainsayers. 

With  this  severance  of  "  the  world  "  as  the  playground  of 
"  the  Prince  of  darkness,"  from  the  sphere  of  God  and 
his  "  Word,"  is  connected  a  theory  of  human  nature  and  a, 
division  of  human  beings  peculiar  to  this  evangelist.  He  sees 
them  in  two  classes  opposed,  not  morally  alone  of  their  own 
free  choice,  not  arbitrarily,  of  God's  electing  or  reprobating 
will, — but  by  heredity  that  goes  behind  the  world  of  time  and 
nature, — as  "  children  of  God  "  and  "  children  of  the  devil," 
known  from  each  other  by  the  infallible  mark  of  aversion  to 
sin  or  proneness  to  it."^  It  is  a  distinction  that  may  arise  in 
the  same  family,  having,  indeed,  its  prototypal  instance  in 
Abel  and  Cain ;  f  that  forces  itself  on  the  attention  of  every 
observer  of  mankind  who  follows  the  heroisms  and  tragedies 
of  their  history.  Seldom  in  the  darkest  times  are  there 
wanting  a  few  choice  spirits  in  whom  the  heavenly  fire  has 
not  died  out,  the  feeling  for  truth,  the  openness  to  love,  the 

*  1  John  iii.  8-10. 

t  Ibid.  12.     I  doubt,  however,  whether  we  can  appeal  to  the  Epistles  as  from- 
the  same  author. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        457 

enthusiasm  of  right :  the  sanctity  of  a  divine  lineage  remains 
in  them  and  ralHes  to  them  "  sucli  as  may  be  saved  "  from  the 
vaster  host  that  is  hurrying  to  infernal  darkness  escorted  by 
the  lusts  of  the  flesh.  Nothing  so  soon  finds  and  draws  these 
unspoiled  natures  as  the  appeal  to  them  of  a  congenial  yet 
higher  Son  of  God ;  and  nothing,  on  the  other  hand,  can  lie 
further  from  the  intelligence  of  a  godless  world  than  the 
deep  truth  he  is  sure  to  speak,  and  nothing  be  more  humbling 
to  its  self-esteem  than  that  summons  to  a  new  birth  from 
which  he  will  never  recede.  In  presence,  therefore,  of  the 
incarnate  Logos  in  his  sojourn  upon  earth,  the  mixed 
multitude  of  men  spontaneously  divides  ;  the  "  little  flock  " 
v^'ho  constitute  the  true  kernel  of  humanity  gather  round  him, 
and  go  in  and  out  with  him,  and  understand  and  trust  his 
voice  ;  for  they  are  the  children  of  light,  and  he  is  from  "  the 
Father  of  lights,  in  whom  is  no  darkness  at  all."  But  the 
rest  are  wrapped  in  a  darkness  which  no  revelation  of  God 
can  pierce, — children  of  "  the  Prince  of  darkness,"  shut  out 
from  the  life  of  God,  and  given  up  to  falsehood,  hate,  and 
death  ;  and  in  their  blindness  can  only  be  affected  either  with 
supercilious  scorn  towards  the  Divine  appeal,  or  murderous 
passion  towards  its  "  faithful  witness."  To  sift  out  these 
classes  from  each  other  was  at  once  the  effect  and  the  purpose 
of  Christ's  visit,  "  For  judgment  am  I  come  into  this  world  ; 
that  they  which  see  not  may  see,  and  that  they  which  see 
may  become  blind."*  "  I  know  mine  own,  and  mine  own 
know  me,  even  as  the  Father  knoweth  me  and  I  know  the 
Father:  "  "  my  sheep  hear  my  voice,  and  I  know  them  and 
they  know  me  :  "  ''but  ye  believe  not,  because  ye  are  not  of 
my  sheep. "t  This  kind  of  "  crisis,"  it  is  evident,  is  no  new 
act  of  judicial  power,  altering  the  relations  or  rights  of 
men :  it  only  tests  and  reveals  the  exact  posture  of  things  as 
they  are,  tearing  away  the  veils  of  semblance  from  the  souls 
of  men,  and  showing  them  in  their  true  afihiitics.  Hence  it 
is  not  a  contradiction,  but  only  a  more  precise  alffrmation,  of 
this  conception  of  judgment,  when  the  evangelist  says,  "  God 
80  loved  the  world,  that  he  gave  his  only-begotten  Son,  that 
"\\hosoever   believeth   in   him   should  not   perish,    but    have 

*  John  ix,  30.     viii.  42-17.     •  t  x.  14,  15,  27,  26. 


438  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

eternal  life.  For  God  sent  not  the  Son  into  the  world  to 
judge  the  tvorld,  but  that  the  world  should  be  saved  through 
him.  He  that  believeth  on  him  is  not  judged :  he  that  be- 
lieveth  not  hatJi  been  judged  already,  because  he  hath  not 
believed  on  the  name  of  the  only-begotten  Son  of  God.  And 
this  is  the  judgment,  that  the  light  has  come  into  the  world, 
and  men  loved  the  darkness  rather  than  the  light ;  for  their 
works  were  evil."*  The  same  idea,  that  the  personal  life  of 
Jesus  on  earth  as  the  Divine  revealer  is  the  test  which  of 
itself  discriminates  the  children  of  God  from  the  unsifted 
mass,  recurs  in  even  condensed  expression  :  "I  am  come  a 
light  into  the  world,  that  whosoever  believeth  in  me  may  not 
abide  in  the  darkness.  And  if  any  man  hear  my  sayings, 
and  keep  them  not,  I  judge  him  not ;  for  I  came  not  to  judge 
the  world  but  to  save  the  world.  He  that  rejecteth  me  and 
receiveth  not  my  sayings,  hath  one  that  judgeth  him  ;  the 
word  that  I  spake,  the  same  shall  judge  him  in  the  last  day  ; 
for  I  spake  not  from  myself ;  but  the  Father  which  sent  me, 
he  hath  given  me  a  commandment  what  I  should  say  and 
what  I  should  speak." t  In  spite  of  the  not  very  consistent, 
perhaps  conventional,  allusion  to  a  future  "  last  day,"  this 
present,  self-acting  "judgment"  through  the  operation  of 
Christ's  personality  and  religion  on  the  hearts  of  men,  is 
the  only  one  in  the  evangelist's  theology  ;  and  is  the  spiritual 
substitute  there  for  the  mythological  scenery  of  the  Parusia 
and  eschatology  of  the  Jewish  apostles. 

And  if  the  great  assize  of  the  synoptist  and  Pauline  Chris- 
tology  is  thus  shifted  back  from  the  "last  days"  to  the 
ministry  of  Christ,  so  too  must  the  resurrection  be  which  is 
to  muster  the  subjects  for  judgment.  And  accordingly  we 
hear,  "  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  The  hour  cometh,  and 
n,02v  is,  when  the  dead  shall  hear  the  voice  of  the  Son  of 
God,  and  they  that  hear  shall  live :  for  as  the  Father  hath 
life  in  himself,  even  so  gave  he  to  the  Son  also  to  have  life 
in  himself."  t  So  quickening  is  the  presence  of  that  Living 
"Word,"  that  it  pierces  the  ears  of  spiritual  death  and  wakes 
elumbering  souls  to  open  their  eyes  on  a  new  heaven,  and 
become  the  conductors  of  its  spirit  to  the  earth.     Whether 

*  John  iii.  16-19.  t  xii.  46-19.  J  v.  25,  26. 


C  Imp  II.]      THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        439 

or  not  the  evangelist  meant  to  leave  room  for  another  and 
more  literal  understanding  of  the  summons  of  the  dead  from 
their  tombs  by  the  voice  of  the  son  of  man,*  it  is  obvious 
that  the  material  conception  had  no  significance  for  him 
except  as  symbolical  of  the  regenerative  power  of  Christ 
which  raises  a  new  creation  and  drops  the  old  in  death. 

All  the  peculiar  features  which  have  been  noticed  converge 
upon  one  result,  viz.,  to  make  the  whole  Christian  revelation 
consist  in  lending  to  the  world  the  Divine  personality  of  the 
Sons  as  an  object  of  faith,  and  a  power  of  sanctification. 
He  is  not  (as  with  the  synoptists)  the  prophet  of  an  era,  the 
medium  of  a  message,  the  herald  of  a  future ;  warning  men 
that,  in  view  of  what  is  coming,  they  must  repent  and  seek 
forgiveness,  and  get  their  "  wedding  garments  "  ready  ;  the 
very  words  "repentance"  and  "forgiveness"  never  once 
occur  in  the  Gospel.  There  is  no  initial  hindrance  in  the 
way  of  discipleship,  needing  to  be  removed  either  by  voluntary 

*  The  Johannine  theology  translates  the  incidents  of  the  Messianic  drama, 
as  far  as  possible,  into  a  system  of  spiritual  trutlis  already  visible  in  experi- 
ence.    The  knowledge  of  God  was  itself  a  heaven  :  faitli  in  Christ  was  eternal 
life  in  possession  :  rejection  of  him  was  tlie  darkness  of  death  :  tlie  drawing 
of  believers  and  unbelievers  into  their  separation  was  self-executed  judgment. 
But,  however  far  this  process  of  translation  was  carried,  the  immediate  rela- 
tions of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  mankind  did  not  supply  equivalents  for  all 
the  essential  parts  of  the  apocalyptic  picture.     Eesurrection  of  the  spiritualli/ 
(lead  at  the  "voice  of  the  Son  of  God  "  there  might  already  be,  and  the  doom  be 
determined  of  those  who  would  not  hear.     But  what  of  the  generations  and 
tribes  who  have  died,  or  yet  will  die,  without  being  put  to  the  test  ?     Were 
there  only  the  departed  Christians  to  be  considered,  tliey  might  pass,  one  by 
one,  to  be  wliere  Cln-ist  is,  while  their  and  his  enemies  might  be  left  dead  in 
their  sins.     But  other  provision  was  needed  for  the  fathers  of  Israel  to  whom 
the  promises  were  given,  and  the  licathen  nations  from  whom  they  were  with- 
held :  and  for  these  apparently  it  is  that  tlie  evangelist  reserves,  from  his 
early  Jewish  belief,  "  the  last  day,"  when  the  tombs  shall  render  up  their 
dead ;  and  sets  up,  as  the  principle  of  judgment,  the  universal  rule  of  con- 
science, the  "  doing  of  good"  or  the  "  doing  of  ill."     I  find  it  impossible  to 
doubt  that  the  words  of  v.  25  quoted  above  speak  of  the  spiritually  dead 
among  the  hearers ;  while  the  following  passage  (28,  29),  which  does  not 
contain  the  words  "  noio  is,"  refers  to  the  literally  dead  :  "  I\Iarvel  not  at 
this  ;  for  the  hour  cometh  in  which  all  that  are  within  the  tombs  shall  hear 
his  voice,  and  shall  come  forth  ;  they  that  have  done  good,  unto  the  resur- 
rection of  life ;  and  they  that  have  done  ill,  to  the  resurrection  of  judgment." 
Oscar  Holtzmann  thinks  that,  in  thus  treating  the  judgment  by  the  Son  of 
INIan  as  a  public  future  event,  the  evangelist  speaks  in  "  accommodation  "  to 
the  traditional  Christian  conception.     His  reasons  arc  ingenious,  but  do  not 
convince  me.     Das  Johannes-cvaugelium,  p^i.  51,  55. 


440  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

.  discipline  or  by  foreign  atonement  :  the  children  of  light 
"need  no  repentance  :  "  the  sins  of  darkness  are  past  redemp- 
tion. "  No  man  can  come  to  me  except  the  Father  which 
sent  me  draw  him  :  "  "  every  one  that  hath  heard  from  the 
Father,  and  hath  learned,  cometh  mito  me."*  The  entire 
meaning  and  effects  of  the  dispensation  were  centred  in  the 
mere  presence  among  men  of  the  Incarnate  Logos ;  whose 
subsistence  in  the  Father  enabled  him  to  lay  open  the  confi- 
dences of  heaven,  and  do  and  be  whatever  was  according  to 
the  pattern  of  His  will ;  whose  life-work  upon  earth,  so  "  full 
of  grace  and  truth,"  so  pathetic  and  sublime  in  its  finite  self- 
limitations,  was  the  pure  expression  of  the  Divine  essence ; 
and  who  accomplished  the  end  for  which  he  was  sent  by 
simply  passing  over  the  human  scene,  mingling  with  the 
human  relations,  and  carrying  into  the  heaven  which  had 
spared  him  for  awhile  the  august  and  subduing  image  of  his 
spiritual  perfection.  So  intense  is  the  evangelist's  preoccupa- 
tion with  this  conception  of  Christ  as  the  Divine  self-mani- 
festation, that  he  even  makes  Jesus  himself  proclaim  it,  "  He 
that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father. "t  Over  and  above 
all  that  he  may  have  to  testify  as  an  organ  of  Divine  truth, 
he  is  himself  its  very  reality,  borrowed  from  the  invisible, 
and  recognized  by  "  his  own  "  as  their  mysterious  life-bringer, 
making  them  conscious  of  new  powers  :  the  fountain  of  living 
waters  assuaging  an  eternal  thirst :  the  bread  of  life,  that 
never  fails  the  hunger  of  souls,  however  various  :  the  source 
of  an  abiding  peace,  which  the  world  cannot  give. 

So  significant  is  this  peculiar  Christology,  that,  to  bring  it 
more  strongly  into  view,  I  will  allow  myself  a  momentary 
over-statement  which,  after  serving  the  purpose  of  exposition, 
shall  be  corrected  to  its  proper  dimensions.  For  the  synoptists, 
the  whole  contents  of  the  story  they  relate  are  important 
as  evidences  of  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus,  proving,  that  is, 
that  he  was  the  person  marked  out  for  a  future  function,  not 
to  be  assumed  till  the  heralds  had  been  sent  forth  and  the 
world  got  ready  for  his  Parusia  "  on  the  clouds  of  heaven." 
Nor  was  it  otherwise  with  the  apostle  Paul ;  excejit  that,  of 
the  manifold  evidences  spread  over  the  Galileans'  narrative, 

*  John  vi.  44,  46.  t  xiv.  9, 


Cliap.  II.J       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.        441 

he  limits  himself  to  the  single  one, — the  resurrection, — v/hicli 
came  into  contact  with  his  own  experience.  For  them,  there- 
fore, the  whole  matter  revealed  lay  beyond  the  ministry  of 
Christ  on  earth,  and  did  not  even  propose  to  begin  till  that 
was  ended :  the  revelation  was  pm-ely  promissory,  and  re- 
ferred, not  to  truth  eternal,  but  to  dramatic  events  to  be 
thrown  upon  the  stage  of  Time.  The  objects  of  Christian 
faith  were  certain  futurities  secured  on  adequate  data  of 
expectation  which  it  was  the  mission  of  Jesus  to  supply. 
In  the  Johannine  view,  the  Eevealer  is  himself  one  with  the 
object  revealed,  the  manifested  God,  the  apprehension  of  whom 
fulfils  the  meaning  of  the  dispensation,  and  /.s  eternal  life 
v;ithout  waiting  for  anything  more  :  the  preliminaries  become 
the  substance,  the  evidences  are  no  other  than  the  things 
evidenced,  the  futurities  are  brought  into  the  present,  the 
heavenly  and  transcendent  life  walks  the  earth,  leaving  its 
vestiges  in  blind  eyes  opened  and  souls  newborn.  The  whole 
secret  of  the  disciple's  initiation  is  in  his  recognition  of  Christ 
as  Divine :  nothing  more  is  needed,  nothing  else  will  serve  ; 
but  within  this  secret  is  contained  a  participation  in  Christ's 
own  divine  experience,  a  dependence,  only  less  immediate,  on 
the  same  aliment  of  immortal  spirits,  which  seals  his  conse- 
cration as  among  the  sons  of  God.  Here  then  the  essence  of 
the  divine  truth  disclosed  is  contained  in  the  life  of  the 
Incarnate  Logos  ;  and,  lying  between  its  opening  and  its  close, 
might  be  said  to  withdraw  at  the  point  where  the  Pauline  reve- 
lation begins.  And  this  would  be  true,  were  it  not  that  the 
fourth  evangelist,  intent  on  writing  up  the  inner  experience  of 
the  Christian  life  to  his  own  time,  crosses  the  boundary  of  the 
incarnate  term,  and  continues  to  characterize  the  ulterior 
development  of  the  Church  when  its  Living  Word  has  returned 
to  heaven.  By  taking  account  of  this  sequel,  which  the 
author,  in  the  form  of  a  prophetic  discourse,  has  inwrought 
into  the  narrative  of  the  last  days  in  Jerusalem,  we  shall 
supply  the  qualification  which  the  previous  over- statement 
required. 

If  the  Logos  became  incarnate  to  manifest  the  LivmgGod, 
and  bring  his  light  and  life  to  tabernacle  awhile  among  men, 
the  bowed  head  on  Calvary  and  the  last  words  "  It  is  finished," 


442  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  iv. 

must  apj)arently  be  the  terminus  of  the  revelation.  Yet  the 
death  upon  the  cross  is  singled  out  not  for  sad  regret,  as  the 
fading  trail  of  a  vanishing  glory,  and  soon  to  live  in  memory 
alone,  but  for  a  joy  in  it  doubly  justified  :  viz.,  in  its  relation  to 
the  past,  as  a  culminating  act  of  self-identification  with  God, 
and  voluntary  preference  for  the  Father's  will :  and  in  relation 
to  the  future,  as  releasing  the  Logos  from  the  human  vehicle 
in  which  few  could  "  behold  its  grace  and  truth,"  and  setting 
it  free  as  the  pure  Divine  Spirit,  to  spread  everywhere,  and, 
from  the  historical  base  already  firmly  fixed  in  the  souls  he 
had  renewed,  to  "  draw  all  men  unto  him."*  In  the  former 
aspect,  the  death  of  Christ  is  signalized  only  as  the  superlative 
crown  of  his  divinely  perfect  life,  his  entire  self-renunciation, 
in  love  to  the  Father  and  to  his  "friends."!  It  is  not  a 
humiliation  forced  upon  him  by  any  other  will,  and  passively 
borne  as  by  a  sheep  led  to  the  slaughter  ;  but  is  a  free  act 
which  the  Father  himself  contemplates  with  love  :  "  therefore 
doth  the  Father  love  me,  because  I  lay  down  my  life,  that  I 
may  take  it  again.  No  one  taketh  it  away  from  me,  but  I  lay 
it  down  of  myself.  I  have  power  to  lay  it  down,  and  I  have 
power  to  take  it  again."!  He  resigns  human  life,  as  he  had 
taken  it,  to  reveal,  from  end  to  end,  the  true  way  from  man 
to  God,  through  a  blending  of  will  and  centring  of  love  in  a 
common  righteousness  ;  and,  that  nothing  may  be  wanting  to 
the  sacrifice,  he  quits  it  by  no  sudden  flight  into  a  safe  heaven, 
but  by  the  well-trodden  path  of  mortal  pain  :  it  is  the  supreme 
fulfilment  of  his  mission  to  "  show  us  the  Father  "  by  perfect 
realization  of  what  is  contained  in  the  spirit  of  sonship. 
'  For  the  sake  of  them  whom  thou  hast  given  me  I  sanctify 
myself,  that  they  themselves  also  may  be  sanctified  in  truth. '§ 
In  presence  of  this  climax  of  moral  sublimity,  the  evangelist 
cannot  look  upon  the  cross  as  a  descent  into  servile  ignominy 
and  shame,  and  treat  it,  like  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians,|! 
as  the  tragic  midnight  that  must  precede  the  everlasting 
day  :  he  calls  it  a  lifthuj  iij)  {vxpova^cu) ,^.  drawing  the  eye  of 
the  disciple  to  the  loftiest  point  of  the  incarnate  episode. 
There  is  in   the  word,  no  doubt,  a  play  upon  the  physical 

*  John  xii.  32.  t  xiv.  31,  xv.  13.  J  x.  17,  IS. 

§  xvii.  11,  10.  II  Pbil.  ii.  7-10.  IT  John  iii.  14,  viii.  28,  xii.  32, 34. 


Chap.  II.]       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON  OF  JESUS.        443 

height  of  the  cross  itself :  hut  it  plainly  commends  itself  to 
choice  only  as  symholizing  the  spiritual  elevation  whence  that 
suffering  form  looks  down.  He  does  not  wait  to  be  exalted 
till  the  death  is  past. 

Not  only  is  the  closing  passage  of  Christ's  visit  no  mere 
limit,  but  an  integral  and  even  consummating  part  of  its 
Divine  manifestation  as  viewed  from  the  past :  it  also  i)rovides 
and  institutes  for  it  a  prolongation  and  indefinite  expansion 
of  the  future ;  so  that,  though  natural  sorrow  filled  the 
hearts  of  the  disciples  on  the  point  of  severance  from  their 
Lord,  it  was  yet  "  expedient  for  them  that  he  should  go 
away."  Why  this  should  be  so  is  not  difficult  to  understand, 
from  the  Johannine  point  of  view.  It  was  one  and  the  same 
Divine  Logos  that  in  the  beginning  was  with  God,  who  in  due 
time  appeared  in  human  form  and  showed  forth  the  Father's 
pure  perfections  in  relation  to  mankind,  who  then  returned  to 
his  eternal  life,  with  the  spiritual  ties  unbroken  which  he 
brought  from  his  finished  work.  The  evangelist  who  opens 
with  the  first  of  these  stadia  of  being  was  not  likely  to 
close  without  reference  to  the  last,  though  the  main  thread 
of  his  gospel  is  engaged  with  the  intermediate  term.  His 
own  Christology  supplies  a  principle  of  continuity  which 
carries  him  past  the  period  of  the  incarnation  still  in  the 
presence  of  the  same  beloved  Son.  Intensely  as  the  light, 
the  life,  the  truth  of  God  had  been  concentrated  in  that 
Divine  personality,  they  were  even  then  essentially  diffusive, 
not  passively  looked  at  and  owned,  but  creative  of  souls  un- 
born or  half-born  before,  and  lifting  them  out  of  themselves 
into  the  love  and  incipient  likeness  of  God.  So  long  as  the 
living  Word  was  in  the  midst  of  those  whom  the  Father  had 
thus  given  to  him,  they  hung  upon  him  in  reverent  depend- 
ence, and  he  '  kept  them  in  God's  truth  and  guarded  them 
that  none  should  be  lost,  save  the  son  of  perdition.'*  He 
was  at  hand  to  keep  alive  their  trust,  to  shield  tham  from  the 
evils  of  the  world,  and  be  their  protector,  the  advocate 
(Paraclete)  to  watch  over  their  Spiritual  well-being,  is  all 
this  to  come  to  nothing  when  he  is  seen  no  more  ?  Does  the 
quickening  influence  emanate  only  from  his  bodily  form,  and 

*•  John  xvii.  12. 


444  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

will  the  new  birth  fall  back  into  death  when  that  is  gone  ? 
No  :  it  is  only  "  the  world,"  and  not  the  disciples,  that  '  can- 
not receive  his  spirit  of  truth,  because  it  does  not  sec  it  or 
know  it '  when  it  is  there :  but  they  in  whom  the  conscious- 
ness of  it  has  been  awakened  by  Christ  himself  can  never  lose 
it  and  take  back  their  old  selves  in  exchange  for  it  again  ;  it 
has  gone  forth  as  a  spirit  from  heaven  into  them,  to  abide 
with  them  for  ever,  whether  he  be  in  the  visible  or  the 
invisible  world.  Nay,  more  :  till  they  are  left  to  live  by  it 
alone  as  an  inward  power  of  light  and  love,  they  will  never 
know  the  hidden  treasures  of  insight  and  peace  which  it  con- 
tains. Not  without  reason  therefore  is  it  said  that  the  Spirit 
which  should  replace  the  personal  presence  of  Christ  would 
"guide  them  into  all  the  trutli.;"*  for  it  is  only  under  the 
developing  action  of  human  experience  and  reflection  that  the 
*'  good  seed  "  flung  from  the  Sower's  hand  could  manifest  the 
range  of  its  fertility.  Though  this  "  Spirit  of  truth  "  which 
was  to  make  the  posthumous  influence  of  Christ  greater  than 
the  personal,  is  called  "another  Paraclete,"!  it  is  plain  that 
this  only  contrasts  the  external  and  internal  form  of  the 
guidance,  and  involves  no  breach  of  identity  in  the  Divine 
Guide  himself  throughout.  '  The  holy  spirit,  whom  the 
Father  would  send  in  Christ's  name,  would  teach  them  all 
things,' — how  ? — Not  by  drawing  on  any  new  sources,  but  by 
'  brinoing  to  their  remembrance  all  that  he  had  said  to 
them  ;  'I  by  '  bearing  witness  of  him :  '§  by  '  taking  of  his 
and  declaring  it  unto  them  :  'H  it  was  still  the  Logos  in  his 
heavenly  personality  interpreting  and  unfolding  the  words  and 
acts  of  his  earthly  incarnation.  An  immanent  divineness 
runs  through  the  consciousness  of  the  whole  hierarchy  of 
spiritual  beings  and  links  them  in  graduated  relation  with 
Him  who  is  kut'  £^ox»jv  "  Spirit."^  The  Son  reveals  the 
Father  :  the  Spirit  interprets  the  Son :  the  new  birth  and 
canctification  of  disciples  bear  witness  to  the  Spirit :  "  that 
they  may  all  be  one  ;  even  as  thou.  Father,  art  in  me,  and  I 
in  thee,  that  they  also  may  be  in  us  :  "  and  "  that  they  may 
be  one,  even  as  we  are  one."** 

*  John  xvi.  13.  t  ^iv.  IG.  t  xiv.  26. 

§  XV.  26.  II  xvi.  14.  IT  ITi^eiJ/xa  6  ^co's,  iv.  24. 

**  xvii.  21,  22. 


Chap.  11.]      THEORIES   OF   THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        445 

As  the  application  of  the  Logos  idea  to  the  person  of  Jesus 
places  the  fourth  Gospel  far  on  in  the  post-apostolic  age,  and 
makes  it  coeval  with  the  gnosticism  prevalent  in  the  fourth 
and  fifth  decades  of  the  second  century,  so  the  conception  of 
the  Paraclete  as  a  supplementary  source  of  revelation  is  an 
evident  provision  for  the  large  development  of  doctrine  which 
,by  that  time  had  eclipsed  the  primitive  tradition,  and  trans- 
formed the  historical  Christ  from  Prophet  to  God.  Time  had 
wrought  in  the  Judaic  Christianity  the  same  kind  of  change 
as  that  which  had  befallen  Judaism  itself  through  severance 
of  place  from  its  ancient  home.  The  Messianic  belief,  like 
the  Semitic  Monotlieism,  was  essentially  national,  bound  up 
indissolubly  with  patriarchal  inheritance  and  tribal  law,  and 
consecrated  places,  and  dreams  of  theocratic  empire  :  and  just 
as  the  rise  of  a  colonial  Hebrew  culture  in  Alexandria  modi- 
fied the  jealous  Jehovah  into  the  immanent  Divine  essence  of 
the  Hellenic  cosmical  Theism,  so  did  the  utter  break-up  of  the 
Jewish  national  organization  during  seventy  years  from  Ves- 
pasian to  Hadrian's  final  blow,  leave  the  Messianic  apocalypse 
with  nothing  to  cling  to,  and  compel  the  interpreter  to  get  rid 
of  it  by  reading  in  between  the  lines  some  spiritual  substitute 
already  realized  in  the  soul.  Hence  it  is  that  the  Parusia, 
the  raising  of  the  dead,  the  judgment,  are  all  taken  out  of  the 
future  and  found  in  the  present.  And  hence  too  it  is  that  the 
evangelist  makes  little  or  no  disguise  of  his  own  post-apostolic 
date,  or  of  the  novelty  of  doctrine  or  usage  that  characterizes 
it.  He  makes  Jesus  speak  of  the  Gentile  influx  into  the 
Church,  "  Other  sheep  I  have,  not  of  this  fold  :  "*  and  even 
treat  it  as  the  peculiar  glory  for  which  he  is  brought  to  the 
hour  of  his  exaltation  in  death,  t  He  attributes  to  Jesus  on 
the  eve  of  his  departure  a  special  instruction  new  to  the 
disciples,  and  attaches  a  promise  to  its  observance  :  '  If  ye  will 
ask  anything  of  the  Father,  he  will  give  it  in  my  name  : 
hitherto  have  ye  asked  nothing  in  my  name  :  ask,  and  \q  shall 
receive,  that  your  joy  may  be  fulfilled.':  ""Whatsoever  ye 
shall  ask  in  my  name,  that  will  I  do,  that  the  Father  may  be 
glorified  in  the  Son  :  if  ye  shall  ask  anything  in  my  name, 
that  will  I  do."§     Here  it  is  plain,  as  Weizsiicker  remarks,  we 

*  Johu  X.  I'j.  t  xii.  '20-32.  t  xvi.  23,  21.  §  xiv.  13,  14. 


446  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

alight  upon  a  new  practice,  viz.,  of  prayer  to  Christ,  and  prayer 
in  his  name,  the  natural  consequence  of  the  recently  developed 
doctrine  of  the  Godhead  of  the  Son.*  Not  till  the  incarnation 
was  over  could  occasion  arise  for  such  a  change :  it  was  the 
work  of  the  Paraclete  to  dispense  with  the  human  person  in 
which  for  awhile  the  glory  of  the  Father  was  seen  by  a  few 
within  reach,  and  to  set  free  the  light  from  that  nucleus  to 
radiate  upon  the  whole  sphere  of  souls,  and  wake  their  springs 
of  life  and  bring  truth  out  of  truth  to  sight,  and  love  upon 
love  to  blossom.  The  theology  of  the  fourth  Gospel  thus 
attests  and  vindicates  the  Hellenized  Christianity  of  its  era, 
wdien  its  Jewish  conflicts  were  obsolete,  and  Gentile  needs  and 
influences  alone  resorted  to  it. 

It  was  a  dark  world,  according  to  the  evangelist,  into  which 
the  light  of  the  revealing  Word  shone  :  so  dark,  that  but  for 
this  lonely  altar  lamp,  the  eternal  midnight  would  never  have 
been  broken.  Had  the  Divine  Logos  remained  in  his  heavenly 
seclusion,  the  earth  would  have  been  left  without  its  vivifying 
source  of  spiritual  life.  He  instituted  and  realized  the  re- 
demption by  taking  our  nature  and  traversing  our  experience. 
How  does  the  writer  understand  this  act  of  "  taking  our 
nature,"  and  what  truth  does  he  draw  from  it '?  Was  the 
incarnation,  in  his  view,  the  first  Divine  assumption  of 
jicrsonal  existence,  and  oftered  to  mankind  in  rebuke  of  their 
pantheistic  dreams  of  a  transcendental  power  without  thought 
or  will  or  love  ?  Does  he  sanction  the  modern  assertion  that 
the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ  is  our  sole  warrant  for  believing 
in  the  personality  of  God  ?  If  so,  to  be  "  made  flesh  "  is  tanta- 
mount here  to  becoming  personal ;  and  till  the  bodily  organism 
was  appropriated,  the  prior  knowledge  and  love  of  the  Father, 
the  seeing  whatsoever  thing  he  did,  the  acting  for  him  in  the 
creatio?!  of  all  that  has  been  made,  and  the  voluntary  descent 
into  the  incarnate  life,  were  insufficient  to  constitute  him  a 
person  !  Nothing  can  well  be  more  at  variance  with  the 
genius  and  purpose  of  the  gospel  than  this  notion,  that  flesh 
and  blood  were  charged  with  the  high  dignity  of  conferring 
personality  on  that  which  had  it  not  before,  and  inducing  on 
a,  si^iritual  nature  its  last  glory  of  intending  intellect  and  love 

*  Das  apostoU:che  Zeitaltcr.     1886,  pp.  537,  538. 


Chap.  II.]      THEORIES   OF  THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS.        447 

and  will.  The  very  name  of  tlie  Divine  Logos  which  dwelt  in 
Jesus  carries  in  it  already  the  whole  contents  of  perfect  reason 
and  volition ;  and  the  end  of  his  episode  on  the  historic  field 
was  not  to  insist  on  an  attrihnte  never  questioned,  but  to 
divert  it  from  outward  acknowledgment  to  inward  hold  upon 
the  conscience  and  affections :  not  to  humanize  Deity,  but  to 
consecrate  humanity.  The  idea  of  incarnation  presupposes, 
instead  of  authenticating,  a  personal  Divine  nature  :  were  it 
iiiqjersonal,  what  interest  could  it  have,  as  a  blind  force  pos- 
sessing itself  of  a  machine,  for  the  foreign  observer  before  whom 
it  figures  in  unmeaning  acts  ?  The  whole  drama,  a.s  conceived 
by  the  evangelist,  is  constructed  on  the  largest  prior  assump- 
tion of  spiritual  personalities  :  the  Father  being  a  person,  the 
Son  being  a  person,  the  human  disciple  being  a  person,  rela- 
tions of  likeness,  of  love,  of  trust,  may  and  do  subsist  among 
them,  and  link  them  into  one  communion  of  life,  before  the 
world,  in  the  world,  beyond  the  world.  The  instrumentality 
of  "  the  Son  of  God"  in  establishing  these  relations  has  its 
three  stadia,  with  the  earthly  visit  in  the  centre.  If  the  post- 
existence  is  meant  to  be  personal  (which  admits  no  doubt), 
the  pre-existence  must  be  so  too;  for  they  balance  each  other, 
and  are  always  covered  by  the  same  terms.  "No  one  hath 
ascended  into  heaven  but  he  that  descended  out  of  heaven  :"* 
' '  What  if  ye  should  behold  the  son  of  man  ascending  where 
he  was  before  ?  "t  "  My  testimony  is  true  ;  for  I  know  whence 
I  came  and  whither  I  go:"t  "And  now,  0  Father,  glorify 
me  with  thine  own  self  with  the  glory  which  I  had  with  thee 
before  the  world  was."§  There  is  no  meaning  in  words  like 
these  unless  the  prior  and  posterior  glory  are  homogeneous, 
and  the  eternal  love  which  receives  him  home  is  the  same 
affection  of  person  to  person  which,  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father,  he  had  "  before  the  world  was."|!  Far  from  lifting  the 
incarnate  life  into  ontological  distinction,  the  evangelist  rather 
treats  it  as  a  brief  disguise  inserted  between  two  periods  of 
personal  existence.  He  does  but  "  tabernacle  among  us," 
pitches,  as  it  were,  his  tent  for  the  night,  and  in  the  morning 
is  away  :  but  in  the  prior  world  he  has  done  all  things  for 

*  John  iii.  13.  t  vi.  02.  J  viii.  U. 

§  xvii,  5.  !l  xvii.  21, 


448  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Dool;  IV. 

the  Father  from  the  beginning,  and  he  returns  thither  to  share 
the  perpetuity  of  God.  So  strongly  is  this  feature  marked,  of 
higher  and  fuller  reality  in  the  life  before  and  after,  that 
scarcely  does  the  incarnation  escape  the  aspect  of  a  mere 
semblance,  pretending  to  be  human.  All  the  acts  of  will,  the 
words  that  are  spoken,  the  deeds  that  are  done,  the  traditions 
which  are  accepted,  are  expressions  of  the  same  personal 
subject, — and  that  subject  the  Divine  Logos  that  was  and  is 
and  is  to  be.  How  else  could  his  historic  life  manifest  the 
Father  ?  Instead  of  representing,  he  would  misrepresent  the 
Godhead,  if  he  offered  a  set  of  personal  volitions  as  the  guid- 
ing clew  to  the  secret  of  an  impersonal  essence. 

This  third  theory  respecting  the  person  of  Christ  could 
never  have  existed  face  to  face  with  the  passing  facts  and 
colloquies  of  his  village  ministry.  No  audience  in  Palestine 
would  listen  for  a  moment  to  a  "  carpenter's  son  "  who  gave 
himself  out  as  "  the  only-begotten  son  of  God  "  just  come 
down  from  heaven  and  charged  with  words  that  gave  eternal 
life.  And  they  would  be  right.  For  a  being  divine  enough 
really  to  be  "  a  second  God  "  would  be  the  last  to  think  or  say 
it,  and  would  leave  the  sacred  place  at  the  disposal  of  others' 
veneration,  and  of  himself  would  rather  say,  "Why  callest 
thou  me  good  ?  none  is  good  save  one,  that  is  God."  Histori- 
cal, in  the  literal  sense,  that  is,  faithful  as  a  representation  of 
objective  incidents  and  real  discourses,  this  Christology  cer- 
tainly is  not.  It  is  an  idealization  of  the  evangelistic  tradi- 
tion, in  which  the  essential  materials,  severed  from  Jewish 
dross,  are  cast  into  the  crucible  of  an  intenser  fervour, 
tempered  by  the  breath  of  a  less  fitful  philosophy.  The 
meaning  which  the  author  is  intent  on  extracting  from  his 
recital  controls  the  selection  and  modelling  of  his  narrative, 
so  that  they  tell  rather  what  might  have  been  than  what 
actually  was.  And  that  meaning  doubtless  corresponds  with 
the  contemporary  theology  and  piety  dear  to  the  church  of 
his  allegiance.  And  in  that  theology  there  is  contained  one 
vital  element  which,  however  questionably  reached,  transcends 
in  truth  and  power  the  level  of  the  synoptists'  gospel.  It  so 
construes  the  personality  of  Christ,  so  avails  itself  of  his 
characteristics,  as  to  abolish  the  difi'erence  of  essence  between 


Chap.  II.  1       THEORIES   OF   THE   PERSON   OF  JESUS.         449 

the  Divine  and  the  human  nature,  and  substitute  for  the  obedi- 
ence of  dependence  the  sympathy  of  Ukeness  and  the  fellow- 
ship of  trust.  In  appearance,  it  unites  the  qualities  of  God 
and  man  in  one  case  only,  and  centres  the  blended  glory  in  a 
single  incarnation.  But  there  it  does  not  end.  The  unex- 
ampled spectacle  of  such  "  grace  and  truth,"  of  heavenly 
sanctity  penetrating  all  human  experiences,  startles  and  wins 
hearts  that  never  were  so  drawn  before,  and  wakes  in  them 
a  capacity  for  that  which  they  reverence  in  another.  This 
attraction  of  affinity  there  could  not  be,  were  there  not  divine 
possibilities  secreted  and  a  divine  persuasion  pleading  in  each 
soul.  There  cannot  be  a  chasm  of  forbidding  antipathy  and 
alienation,  rendering  for  ever  inaccessible  to  man  the  very 
"  beauty  of  holiness  "  which  he  already  adores:  nor  is  there 
any  hindering  curse  to  be  bought  off,  before  he  can  enter  on 
the  new  life  of  self-consecration.  There  is  no  longer  need  of 
despair  at  the  seemingly  hopeless  task  of  climbing  the  heavens 
and  finding  the  unapproachable  God.  For  He  himself  comes 
unsought,  and  lifts  the  latch  of  our  nature  when  we  thought 
the  door  was  shut,  and  makes  his  abode  with  us,*  seeking  us 
with  his  love,  finding  us  with  his  truth,  and  claiming  us  with 
his  righteousness.  Thus  does  the  Paraclete  perpetuate  and 
universalize  the  impersonation  of  the  Son  of  God  in  the  Son 
of  Man,  and  carry  it  through  the  spiritual  history  of  the 
world,  and  convert  the  life  of  Humanity  itself  into  a 
Theophauy. 

•      *  John  xlv.  23. 


G  G 


453 


CHAPTEE  III. 

THEORIES    OF    THE    WORK   OF    JESUS. 

§  1.   The  Sense  of  Sin  in   Christendom. 

In  the  foregoing  chapter  it  has  been  shown  how  the  his- 
torical Hfe  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  fell  upon  a  time  and  related 
him  to  a  people  charged  with  preconceptions  which  threw  a 
variety  of  false  colours  upon  his  figure,  and  have  handed  down 
the  image  of  it  in  several  editions,  no  one  of  which  can  claim 
photographic  truth.  To  a  large  extent,  the  disciples'  repre- 
sentation of  what  he  was  conformed  itself  to  their  previous 
idea  of  what  he  had  to  do  ;  and  that  this  was  all  contained  in 
their  recognition  of  him  as  Messiah,  afforded  no  security 
against  wide  divergence  ;  the  Messiah  being  a  wholly  imaginary 
personage,  whose  attributes  admitted  of  variation  almost 
indefinite.  Each  disciple,  looking  for  what  he  had  been  led 
to  expect,  and  finding  what  he  most  needed,  interpreted  the 
history  in  the  way  congenial  with  his  thought,  and  helped 
into  existence  this  or  that  of  the  several  portraitures  which 
tradition  has  preserved. 

When,  however,  we  come  to  reckon  with  the  chief  pre- 
conceptions of  the  appointed  work  of  Christ  in  his  mission  to 
the  world,  their  number,  though  considerable  if  every  nuanee 
of  theological  distinction  be  counted,  rapidly  thins  away  for 
an}'  one  who  will  look  beneath  the  logical  forms  of  statement, 
and  penetrate  to  the  spiritual  fact  of  human  experience  that  is 
hid  within.  Or,  if  he  prefers  it,  as  more  congenial  to  him 
than  this  deep  search,  he  may  carry  an  objective  criticism 
through  the  successive  ages  of  Christendom,  and  elicit  from 
the  life  and  literature  of  even  contrasted  churches  the  true 
springs  of  their  piety ;  and,  through  all  the  different  languages, 
he  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  l)y  the  breathing  of  the  same 
thoughts,  yet  so  modulated  that  the  severed  voices  from  all 


Chap.  III.]        THEORIES    OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  451 

directions,  flow  together  into  one  chorus  of  harmony.  This 
imphes  no  more  than  some  common  affection  characteristic  of 
rehdon.  AVhat  that  common  affection  is  it  mav  be  well  to 
determine,  by  distinguishing  the  forms  of  doctrine  under 
which  it  has  justified  itself  to  the  understanding.  It  is  an 
affection  so  inwoven  with  the  deepest  root  of  Christianity,  and 
so  exclusively  developed  by  it,  that  it  is  hard  to  describe  it 
except  from  within,  and  express  it  in  terms  familiar  to  other 
religions.  It  has,  indeed,  to  borrow  from  their  vocabulary  its 
first  faltering  words  ;  but  only  to  charge  them  with  a  meaning 
which  was  never  there  before,  and  which  their  exoteric  use  can 
but  ineffectually  simulate.  It  is  in  truth  a  passion  essentially 
new  to  the  human  soul,  notwithstanding  its  rudimentary  ten- 
tatives  before,  which  constitutes  the  inner  genius  of  Christi- 
anity, and  gives  a  peculiar  complexion  to  its  whole  history. 

It  is  a  favourite  maxim  with  the  satirical  observer  of  the 
world,  that  the  way  to  make  men  religious  is  to  frigliteu  them. 
The  churches,  he  says,  are  never  so  full  as  in  time  of  public 
alarm  ;  and  the  prayers  that  are  slow  to  come  from  the  lips  of 
health  and  the  heart  of  joy,  find  voluble  voice  when  life  is 
wasting  away  in  sickness  and  sorrow.  The  priest  who  tries  in 
vain  to  reduce  the  pulse  of  hopeful  yigour  is  soon  invoked  by 
the  humble  penitent,  and  leads  him  hither  and  thither  as  a 
httle  child.  Place  a  Whitefield  and  a  Wesley  before  the  rude 
multitude  on  the  hill-side,  and,  in  spite  of  their  differences, 
they  instinctively  fling  all  their  impassioned  fervour  upon  one 
primary  aim, — to  convict  of  sin,  to  exhibit  an  immeasurable 
danger,  and  cast  down  the  strong  will  with  sobs  for  rescue. 
The  fact,  no  doubt,  is  truly  stated,  and  marks  a  striking 
difference  between  the  terror  of  the  brute  and  the  terror  of  the 
man.  Whether  it  means  what  the  satirist's  contempt  assumes, 
and  bespeaks  a  weakness  from  which  the  happier  animals  are 
free, — whether  it  is  a  fall  from  the  true  light  of  life  into  a 
delusive  shadow  of  death,  is  a  question  of  which  perhaps  he 
never  seriously  thouglit.  Plainly,  however,  it  is  in  virtue  of 
some  endowment  purchj  human,  something  added  to  the  ground- 
work of  the  animal  nature,  that  we  are  liable  to  this  ex- 
perience ;  and  this  alone  might  lead  us  to  suspect  it  to  be  not 
an  infirmity,  but  an  insight  and  a  power. 

G  G   2 


/52  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

The  truth  is,  Fear  can  never  be  the  occasion  of  rehgion, 
except  in  a  nature  which  ought  to  be  above  fear.  It  is  the 
shrinking  of  the  creature  before  the  decrees  of  the  Creator, — 
the  cry  of  the  finite  being  under  the  laws  of  the  Infinite ;  and 
wherever  there  is  consciousness  of  this  its  relative  character, 
wherever  the  Creator  and  his  infinite  order  are  present  to  the 
thought,  it  ceases  to  be  a  mere  sensitive  recoil,  and  by  attest- 
ing a  variance  between  the  human  will  and  the  Divine,  carries 
a  secret  compunction  with  it,  and  turns  the  shriek  into  a 
prayer.  Had  we  no  vision  of  heavenly  things,  pain  would  be 
only  pain,  and  fear  would  be  but  its  shadow  on  the  path  before 
us;  and  the  passing  moan  and  the  sudden  start  would  tell  all 
the  tale.  But  the  depth  and  significance  of  human  unrest 
comes  of  this  :  that  we  live  for  ever  seeing  what  is  Invisible  ; 
that  we  suffer  before  the  face  of  the  All-blessed  ;  that  we  resist 
the  dispositions  of  the  All-loving  ;  that  we  sin  in  the  sight  of 
the  All-holy ;  and  so  are  not  at  one  with  Him  to  whom  we 
belong,  and  in  whose  perfection  our  imperfection  should  be 
lost,  if  not  in  fact,  at  least  in  faith.  Haunted  in  thought  and 
aftection  by  the  Absolute  Goodness,  and  scarcely  rising  by  our 
poor  strength  above  constant  failure,  we  can  never  lose  the 
sense  of  humbling  separation  ;  nor  can  the  Divine  light  stream 
through  the  liars  of  our  narrow  nature,  without  parting  with 
its  outer  brilliancy,  and  melting  into  a  thousand  pathetic  hues. 
It  is  this  entrance  of  the  Infinite  within  finite  conditions,  this 
transcendency  of  our  knowledge  beyond  our  strength,  this 
inward  homage  to  the  Supreme  Sanctity  while  rendering  it  a 
mixed  and  tainted  service,  which  saddens  us  with  that  in- 
extinguishable sense  of  estrangement  from  God,  which  it  is  the 
aim  of  all  religion  to  acknowledge  and  to  escape.  This  secret 
consciousness  it  is,  of  variance  from  the  only  True,  of  distance 
from  the  only  Eeal,  of  alienation  from  the  only  Holy,  which 
wakes  up  at  the  touch  of  human  suffering  and  fear,  and  turns 
them  from  a  bare  quivering  of  the  flesh  into  a  fruitful  anguish 
of  the  spirit.  It  is  by  appealing  to  this  that  the  true  prophet 
breaks  the  contented  sleep  of  instinct, — rings  the  alarm  in  the 
chambers  of  the  soul, — flings  the  animal  nature  convulsed 
with  shame  upon  the  ground,  and  by  a  purifying  sorrow  lifts 
it  up  into  responsible  manhood.     In  vain  would  the  preacher 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  453 

light  his  torch  from  fires  of  hell,  did  he  address  only  physical 
susceptibility  and  abject  consternation  ;  it  is  the  moral  history 
written  within,  the  felt  interval  between  what  is  and  what 
might  have  been,  which  these  things  passionately  express  and 
which  makes  them  credible  at  all.  The  terror  is  born  of 
religion,  not  the  religion  of  terror. 

As  it  is  the  function  of  the  iwoi^hctic  spirit  to  keep  alive  this 
ideality  of  conscience,  and  interpret  it  as  God's  own  light 
within  the  soul,  so  is  it  the  business  of  the  j^n^^sf/// office  to  lay 
its  disquietudes  to  rest,  and  by  outward  methods  specially  its 
own  to  reinstate  the  broken  harmony.  The  priest  could  never 
be,  but  for  the  noble  discontent,  the  divine  sorrow,  with  which 
the  prophets  electrify  the  murky  air  of  life,  and  divide  it  into 
heavenly  gleams  and  stormy  glooms.  The  priest  lives  upon 
the  shame  and  misery  of  stricken  souls  that  are  in  haste  to 
find  peace  with  themselves  and  with  their  God :  he  offers  to 
take  them  to  their  rest,  not  by  pure  and  inward  reconciliation 
that  would  speak  for  itself  in  its  own  harmonies,  but  by  magic 
waj's  which  ask  no  aid  of  the  human  will,  and  make  no 
report  to  the  human  heart.  The  whole  institution  of  sacrifice, 
which  forms  the  very  substance  of  all  ancient  worship,  and  the 
proper  business  of  a  sacerdotal  order,  arises,  it  cannot  be 
doubted,  from  the  consciousness  of  imperilled  peace  between 
earth  and  heaven,  and  the  desire  to  do  something  which  might 
conciliate  the  smile,  or  break  up  the  frown,  of  the  Supreme 
Powers.  It  was  an  attempt  to  restore  right  relations  between 
the  visible  and  the  invisible  world  ;  and  however  low  the  ex- 
piatory conceptions  that  mingle  with  it,  it  still  attests  the 
conscious  variance  between  the  human  and  the  Divine,  and 
proclaims  its  perpetuity  by  never-ceasing  effort  to  get  rid  of  it. 
But  every  priestly  device  for  this  end  is  but  a  i)retence  at 
wiping  out  the  shadow  while  the  substance  that  casts  it  still 
is  there  ;  and  when  the  process  is  over  and  the  magician  is 
gone,  the  darkness  lies  as  before  within  its  silent  outline. 

If  ever  a  religion  could  subsist  without  this  feeling,  it  would 
be  the  Nature- worship  of  the  old  heathen  world,  whose  Olym- 
pus and  Tartarus  were  almost  parts  of  its  geographj^  and 
whose  gods  were  scarce  diviner  than  its  men.  Yet  tradition 
consecrated  many  a  fearful  and  pathetic  sacrifice,  which,  re- 


454  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

produced  upon  the  tragic  stage,  hushed  and  solemnized  the 
gayest  populace  of  history.  Not  even  the  Attic  sunshine 
could  dissipate  the  shadows  from  the  Furies'  grove. 

Infinitely  more  profound  was  this  feeling  in  the  Hebrew 
race ;  their  whole  polity  being  in  fact  an  organized  method  of 
assuaging  it,  and  for  ever  renewing  the  for  ever  broken  cove- 
nant with  God.  Their  history,  their  culture,  their  literature, 
are  little  else  than  its  prolonged  expression  ;  their  prophets 
dissipating  the  false  repose  of  the  national  conscience,  and 
flinging  the  fresh  light  of  heaven  direct  upon  their  sins  ;  their 
priests  ever  ready  with  an  atonement,  and  soothing  them 
again  with  remission  of  the  past ;  till  the  alternation  ended  m 
the  triumph  of  the  temple  and  the  altar,  and  Jerusalem, 
having  killed  the  prophets,  and  stoned  them  that  were  sent 
unto  her,  could  sit  at  ease  upon  her  hills,  look  out  for  her 
Messiah,  and  clap  her  hands  at  the  sinking  world. 

Now  when  we  ask,  throughout  Christendom,  what  it  is  that 
its  Author  has  characteristically  done  for  men,  the  first  element 
in  the  answer  is  this  :  he  has  awakened  in  them  a  sense  of 
Sin  entirely  unlike  the  servile  fear  and  mere  deprecation  of 
retributory  anger  which  had  set  up  the  priest  and  the  altar  of 
earlier  religions.  They  brought  their  expiatory  sacrifices  at 
crises  of  terror  or  special  crime,  when  the  heavens  scowled 
upon  them  and  could  hardly  hold  their  thunders  in :  He 
breathed  into  the  soul  a  permanent  sorrow  of  humility, 
kindling  on  its  upper  side  with  a  glory  of  aspiration.  Their 
impulse  was  to  fly  from  the  track  of  the  pursuing  gods,  and 
hide  "  in  caves  and  dens  of  the  earth  "  from  the  capturing 
enemies:  He  put  it  into  the  offender's  heart  to  say,  "I  will 
arise  and  go  to  my  Father,"  and  to  expect  the  embrace  of 
restormg  love.  Their  whole  device  was  to  buy  off  and  escape 
the  pains  and  penalties  of  their  wrong-doing,  and  be  no  worse 
for  it  :  He  brought  his  penitents  to  just  the  opposite  mind : 
so  that  nothing  is  further  from  their  desire  than  to  throw  their 
burden  off ;  it  is  the  fitting  sequel  to  their  sin,  and  it  would 
leave  a  stain  upon  them  not  to  bear  it  to  the  last :  nor  is  the 
suffering  unsanctified,  for  the  spirit  now  reconciled  to  God.  It 
is  this  genuine  moral  assent  to  the  requirements  of  the  Divine 
Holiness, — this  inward  acceptance  of  all  that  it  appoints,  and 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  455 

loves,  and  is,  -^liicli  lifts  the  Christian  sense  of  Sin  into  quite 
another  repjion  of  character  from  that  in  which  self-interested 
hope  and  terror  assail  the  will. 

Hence  it  is  only  natural  that,  in  carrying  on  their  work 
among  men,  the  true  missionaries  of  Christ  make  it  their  first 
aim  to  reach  the  springs  of  compunction  and  extort  the  cry 
for  relenting  love.  And  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  this 
sentiment  of  Divine  need  has  played  a  part  in  the  Christian 
history  of  mankind  which  it  never  played  before.  The  very 
eagerness  with  which  the  new  religion,  in  spite  of  its  un- 
promising origin,  was  seized  on  as  "  the  desire  of  nations," 
the  rapidity  with  which  it  stole  into  the  heart  of  great  cities, 
and  into  the  cabin  of  the  slave,  the  resorts  of  commerce,  and 
even  the  palace  of  the  Cfesars,  the  welcome  it  found  with 
"devout  women,"  and  dissatisfied  scholars,  and  passionate 
natures  pining  for  nobler  life,  show  that  it  interpreted  aright 
the  weariness  of  a  world  trying  to  live  upon  the  present  and 
the  visible,  and  looked  with  eyes  not  too  sad  on  a  humanity 
lost  to  God.  In  that  universal  death  of  nations  which  coin- 
cided with  the  consolidation  of  the  Eoman  empire,  the  most 
generous  and  delicate  springs  of  energy  collapsed  ;  on  the  spent 
level  of  that  subjugated  area,  where  genius  breathed  heavily 
and  self-interest  had  the  chief  play,  natures  with  higher  wants 
found  nothing  c^uickening  to  think,  and  nothing  worthy  to  do ; 
and  humanity,  at  the  moment  when  it  reached  its  unit}-,  was 
made  conscious  of  its  degradation  too.  It  is  impossible  to  read, 
I  do  not  say  the  satirists,  whose  business  it  is  to  lash  the  vices  of 
mankind,  but  even  the  historians  of  that  period,  without  per- 
ceiving that  it  was  an  age  of  portentous  moral  corruption, 
fostering  every  shameless  license,  permitting  every  cruelty, 
rewarding  every  daring  crime  which  law  and  right  are  consti- 
tuted to  prevent ;  so  that  whoever  looked,  from  the  depth  of  a 
purified  conscience,  at  the  ethical  physiognomy  of  society,  be- 
held an  objective  image  of  all  that  he  most  loathed  in  his  own 
worst  possibilities,  and  that  warned  him  how  far  he  might  fall 
into  the  darkness  away  from  God.  And  just  when  the  disease 
was  at  its  height,  the  physicians  were  beneath  contempt.  As 
the  world  lay  festering  in  wickedness,  the  priests  of  Paganism 
could  not  even  carry  about  the  cleansmg  incense  of  a  believing 


45'3  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

presence,  or  charm  misgivings  or  despair  with  even  an 
imaginary  peace ;  for  the  gods  had  become  a  fable,  the  temples 
a  trade,  and  their  expiations  a  pretence  ;  so  that  the  earth 
seemed  cut  off  from  all  higher  life,  and  doomed,  like  a  plague- 
stricken  city,  to  nurse  its  own  fever  and  infuriate  its  own 
delirium,  deserted  by  all  that  could  heal  or  pity  or  even  drop 
the  cold  water  on  the  tongue. 

In  such  a  world  then,  if  it  can  be  caught  in  listening  mood, 
let  the  Beatitudes  fall  upon  the  ear  and  tell  the  secret  of  the 
meek,  the  self-sacrificing,  and  the  pure  in  heart ;  let  the 
infinite  heaven  open,  and  the  Living  God  become  all  in  all ; 
let  the  image  be  shown,  on  the  distant  hills  of  Palestine,  of 
One  who  was  transfigured  with  the  blended  glory  of  Divine 
and  human  love,  now  flushed  v/ith  compassion,  now  pale  with 
prayer,  with  the  child  in  his  arms,  or  the  penitent  at  his  feet ; 
let  the  tone  be  heard  in  which  he  thrusts  his  very  essence 
away,  and  says,  "  There  is  none  good  save  One,  that  is  God:" 
and  what  light  must  such  revelations  bring  with  them  ?  Will 
they  not  come  upon  the  rarer  and  better  minds  like  a  waking 
into  the  stainless  morning  from  a  night  of  fevered  dreams  ? 
and  yet,  while  justifying  their  purest  enthusiasm,  filling  them 
also  with  an  awful  despair  ?  Who  can  wonder  that,  when  the 
Divine  light  is  brightest,  the  human  deformities  on  which  it 
shines,  and  to  which  it  leaves  no  shade,  look  most  appalling '? 
that  the  more  deeply  the  conscience  is  touched,  the  more 
heinous  should  appear  not  only  its  own  unfaithfulness,  Ijut 
the  collective  guilt  of  mankind.  Let  it  not  be  said  that  this 
shadow  so  broadly  flung  upon  human  life  falsifies  the  parting 
prophecy  of  Christ,  "  Peace  I  leave  with  you  :"  for  does  he 
not  qualify  it  by  adding,  '' Mij  peace  I  give  unto  you,"  and 
warning  his  disciples,  "  IS^ot  as  the  world  giveth,  give  I  unto 
you?  "  The  religion  bequeathed  under  such  conditions  could 
not  fail  from  the  very  first  to  take  the  false  brilliancy  away 
from  a  scene  that  had  lost  the  innocence  and  truth  of  simplei' 
-days,  and  should  speak  home  to  the  exceptional  minds  that 
turned  from  that  scene  in  weariness  and  were  waiting  for 
better  things. 

The  same  character,  so  striking  in  its  marked  contrast  with 
the   gay   and    reckless   heathen   life,    has   maintained    itself 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  457 

through  the  whole  length  of  Christian  history.  The  question 
nearest  to  the  heart  of  it  has  been,  not  '  how  stands  the  life 
of  man  with  physical  nature  ? '  but,  '  how  stands  the  life  of 
man  with  the  spiritual  God  ? '  and  as  the  finite  has  thus  been 
confronted  with  the  Infinite,  and  the  actual  been  tried  by  the 
Supreme  ideal,  the  sense  of  short-coming  and  the  sigh  of 
failure  could  never  die.  Aii  eternal  longing,  an  unwearied 
pressure,  a  beating  of  the  labouring  wings,  however  far  the 
height  and  lone  the  track,  mark  the  spiritual  tendencies  cf 
Christendom.  There  alone  even  shame  does  not  wear  the 
downcast  face,  but  turns  an  uplifted  look,  with  the  full  eye  on 
heaven,  and  only  its  tears  given  to  the  ground.  Throughout 
its  ages,  penitence  has  been  recognized  as  a  condition 
inseparable  from  the  human  soul,  and  the  provisions  for  it 
have  been  wrought  into  an  institution.  Sacred  Art  has  caught 
the  same  inspiration.  It  instinctively  aims  to  suggest  more 
than  it  displays;  giving  to  its  human  forms  depth  of  expression 
rather  than  the  balance  of  repose  ;  and  to  its  great  churches, 
not  the  compact  outline  and  satisfying  symmetry  of  the  Greek 
temple,  which  had  no  shadow  except  what  the  sunshine 
brought  with  it  through  the  peristyle,  but  the  deep  perspective, 
and  the  high-clasped  space,  and  the  intersecting  arches  show- 
ing marvels  of. distance  and  hiding  more,  and  the  shrined 
chapels  and  retreating  oratories  solemn  with  coloured  lights 
and  hinted  glooms, — everything  that  can  be  born  into  shapes 
of  stone  out  of  the  sense  of  mystery  and  immensity  embracing 
in  pity  the  child  of  sorrow  and  vain  endeavour.  The  very 
forms  of  speech  were  remoulded  by  the  tender  pressure  of  the 
same  constant  feeling  working  itself  into  thought  ;  and  the 
old  Eoman  tongue,  so  firm  and  round,  so  clear  and  true  to  the 
business  of  civil  life,  scarcely  knew  itself  when  it  was  trans- 
ported from  the  forum  to  the  church,  and  heard  with  what 
plaintive  voice  and  delicate  turns  and  musical  simplicity  it 
could  tell  the  drama  and  sing  the  lyrics  of  an  inner  life 
unknown  before.  The  hymns  and  litanies  of  Christendom  are 
the  perjjctual  sigh  of  tlie  human  spirit  for  the  Divine,  now 
sinking  into  a  Miserere  for  their  separation,  and  then  swelling 
into  a  Jubilate  at  their  reunion.  Nay,  even  upon  its  philosophy 
and  polity  the  same  unresting  and  prospective  tempev  has  left 


458  SEVERANCE    OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

its  mark.  The  dream  and  tendency  of  modern  society  has 
heen,  not  to  conform  to  the  world  as  it  is,  but  to  make  it  what 
it  ought  to  be ;  not  to  stereotype  some  best  condition  which 
should  adequately  repress  the  incurable  evil  and  set  free  the 
given  store  of  good,  but  to  repent  of  every  wrong  in  the  past 
and  press  on  to  every  right  in  the  future  ;  to  open  boundless 
possibilities,  and  own  with  shame  how  few  of  them  have  yet 
been  realized  ;  to  treat  humanity  as  no  perpetual  self-repeti- 
tion, but  as  a  spiritual  organism  of  unlimited  growth,  with 
ills  deciduous  as  each  season  falls,  but  roots  that  can  feed  on 
the  very  decay  they  make,  and  branches  that  answer  with  a 
fuller  foliage  to  every  vernal  wind.  So  much  for  living  in 
presence  of  the  Infinite  God,  instead  of  finite  Nature :  the 
mingled  sense  of  possible  righteousness  and  actual  guiltiness 
has  at  once  humbled  and  inspired  the  human  soul,  and  im- 
pressed a  movement  upon  Christendom  out  of  the  dead  past 
into  the  living  future,  which  had  never  been  owned  by  men 
before. 

Do  I  refer  this  sense  of  sin  and  mood  of  penitence  and 
pressure  of  aspiration  to  an  inadequate  source,  when  tracing 
it  to  the  awakened  ideality  of  conscience,  touched  by  the 
majesty  of  grace  and  truth  in  Jesus  himself"?  Shall  I  be 
reminded  that  by  the  first  preachers  of  his  word  there  was  a 
terror  spread  abroad,  the  thunder-clap  of  which  startled  many 
a  soul  insensible  to  the  sweet  persuasion  of  the  divinest  life  ? 
Yes,  they  doubtless  did  go  forth  with  a  clarion  of  alarm,  an- 
nouncing "  the  end  of  all  things  "  as  "at  hand,"  and  bidding 
men  make  haste  to  repent  and  leap  into  the  life-boat,  for  the 
world  had  struck  upon  a  rock  and  would  ride  the  seas  of  time 
no  more.  And  it  cannot  be  denied  that  this  stupendous 
exi3ectation,  wherever  it  got  hold,  would  intensify  the  plaint  of 
penitence  and  the  prayer  for  rescue  in  every  soul  weighed 
down  by  guilty  memories.  But  which  of  the  two  horrors, 
physical  and  moral,  that  mingle  in  that  cry  is  answerable  foT 
the  other?  Could  the  vital  struggle  of  impending  wreck  set 
up  a  compunction  in  a  nature  either  above  or  below  the 
capacity  for  guilt  ?  To  the  mere  instinctive  creature  the 
disorders  of  life  bring  pain  alone,  with  neither  self-reproach 
nor  care.     And  from  a  Christ,  on  the  other  hand,  the  crosa 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  459 

itself  can  wriiif;'  (Diily  the  prayer  of  a  Divine  love,  "  Father, 
forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do."  But  whero 
there  is  already  a  haunting  consciousness  of  many  a  sinful 
stain  unwashed  l)y  cleansing  tears,  of  selfish  aims  ascendant 
over  sacred  calls  refused,  of  the  manifold  confusions  of  a 
heart  not  right  with  God,  the  last  hour  of  probation  cannot 
threaten  to  strike  without  hurrying  into  it  a  crowd  of  moral 
arrears  and  a  train  of  shadow}^  forebodings,  such  as  fitly  visit 
spirits  that  "  believe  and  tremble." 

Nay,  more.  The  very  possibility  of  belief  itself  in  such  a 
prophecy  as  that  there  is  to  be  no  morrow  for  a  world,  is 
dependent  on  a  secret  anarchy  of  the  private  conscience  and 
a  terrible  prevalence  of  corruption  m  social  life.  A  prediction 
so  monstrous  would  not  be  listened  to  in  a  community  under 
righteous  sway,  where  there  were  no  odious  vices  and  no 
flagrant  wrong,  and  personal  purity  and  mutual  service 
maintained  the  equilibrium  of  peace.  Innocent,  faithful, 
well-ordered  and  disinterested  people  cannot  be  made  to  be- 
lieve in  the  near  ruin  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth :  it  must 
be  a  world  not  worth  preserving  which  they  can  reckon  on 
seeing  immediately  burnt  up.  Tragedies  of  judgment  and 
visions  of  the  last  despair  are  the  outward  projection  of 
inward  remorse,  or  of  the  torture  of  baffled  righteousness. 
Fevered  passions  and  a  paralytic  will,  waves  of  infinite  desire 
rolling  over  a  soul  in  moral  decrepitude,  spread  an  answering 
universe  around,  and  will  render  any  portentous  vaticination 
credible.  And  similiar  predisposition  may  be  wrought  in  the 
lonely  servant  of  God,  or  some  small  band  of  his  rejected 
witnesses,  at  the  spectacle  of  hopeless  greed  and  cruel  wrong 
and  shameless  indulgence,  in  a  ''  faithless  and  perverse 
generation."  It  is  everywhere  the  same  ;  the  insight  of  con- 
science and  the  sense  of  Sin  are  the  source  and  not  the  fruit 
of  religious  fear ;  and  whatever  is  fabulous  in  the  scene  on 
which  it  looks  is  but  a  distorted  shadow  cast  from  the  truest 
light.  And  that  this  truest  light  shines  as  it  does  into  our 
hearts  we  owe,  as  I  believe,  to  its  reflection  in  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ,  the  mediator  between  God  and  man,  by  realiz- 
ing a  type  of  lioHness  and  ground  of  spiritual  fellowshij) 
relative  to  both.  .    , 


46o  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

It  is  true  that  the  first  missionaries  of  Christ,  through 
whom  this  characteristic  was  conveyed  into  the  heart  of 
Christendom,  were  themselves  unconscious  that  they  drew  it 
from  his  personaHty ;  and,  in  imparting  it,  they  did  not  com- 
mend it  as  a  trait  of  his  own  spirit,  but  rather  rested  it  on 
dogmatic  grounds,  adopted  as  axiomatic  from  anterior  or  con- 
temporary theologies  for  which  he  was  in  no  way  responsible. 
The  Judaic  gospel,  assuming  a  national  instead  of  a  moral 
and  spiritual  division  between  the  lost  and  the  saved,  con- 
founded the  sense  of  sin  with  a  despair  of  election,  or  under 
proselyte  conditions,  with  a  frightened  resort  to  ritual  com- 
pliances. Overleaping  these  invidious  limits,  the  Pauline 
gospel  universalized  Sin,  and  made  it  dreadful  by  linking  it 
with  Death  ;  but,  attaching  it  as  an  irresistible  attribute  to 
all  flesh  so  as  to  be  inborn  in  all  the  children  of  Adam,  re- 
duced it  to  a  constitutional  necessity,  to  be  deplored  with  the 
sigh  of  the  slave  rather  than  the  tears  of  the  penitent ;  and 
regarding  it  as  equally  present  with  its  entail  of  moral 
penalty,  whether  the  act  is  of  blind  instinct  or  of  conscious 
wrong,  expelled  it  from  the  moral  province  altogether,  and 
planted  it  among  the  sequences  of  objective  phenomena. 
To  rescue  the  race  of  the  terrestrial  Adam  from  this  fatalized 
condition,  the  apostle,  we  have  seen,  invokes  the  Celestial 
Adam,  the  failure  of  the  Natural  being  reversible  only  by  in- 
tervention of  the  supernatural.  The  process  of  redemption 
which  the  apostle  constructs  and  applies  will  be  noticed  in 
the  next  section.  It  is  based,  like  the  Galilean  evangel  which 
preceded  it,  on  Jewish  preconceptions  which  have  neither 
validity  for  us,  nor  foundation  in  the  personal  religion  of 
Jesus.  It  is  a  theory  in  which  the  accepted  facts  of  his  death 
and  resurrection  are  wrought  into  their  place  in  a  vast 
Theodicy  embracing  the  providential  drama  of  humanity  from 
its  opening  to  its  consummation.  Being  the  theory  of  one 
whose  knowledge  of  Jesus  began  with  his  revelation  from 
heaven,  it  naturally  made  no  use  of  the  features  of  his  earthly 
life  and  personality.  Considered  as  the  afterthought  of  a 
posthumous  disciple,  it  is  a  wonderful  construction,  full  of 
original  combination  and  deep  experience  and  large  sweep  of 
thought  and  sympathy.     But  it  presents  us  rather  with  the 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  461 

outer  contour  of  the  Christian  faith  as  organized  for  a  world's 
history,  than  with  the  inner  secret  of  God  which  lives  as  its 
kernel  in  each  Christlike  soul. 

§  2.   T]ic  AjwstoUc  Doctrine  of  Rerlrmpfion. 

It  has  often  been  remarked  by  the  critics  of  religion  that 
its  tone   of   intense  penitence  and    its   assurance   of  Divine 
acceptance    do    not    adjust  themselves    well    together,    and 
can   hardly   be   alike  sincere.     How,    it    is   asked,   can   the 
worshipper  who  confesses  himself   so  steeped  in  sin  receive 
any  light  of  hope  on  the  eye  he  lifts  to  heaven  ?     How  pass 
from   his  passionate  cry  of  self-al)horrence  to  his  hymn  of 
repose  on  the  love  of  God  ?  how,  within  an  hour,  look  down 
from  the  brink  into  an  abyss  of  despair,  and  then  l)e  lost 
in  visions  of  everlasting   peace  ?      If  penitence  were  only  a 
slavish  terror  of  a  wrathful  hell,  it  certainly  could  not  pass 
so  soon  into  the  joy  of  assured  salvation.     But,  strange  as  it 
may  seem  to  one  unfamiliar  with  the  laws  of  spiritual  belief,  these 
opposite  states,  far  from  being  incompatible,  are  inseparable, 
— the  two  sides  of  one  and  the  same  faith,  which  only  com- 
pletes its  expression  in  transition  from  the  one  to  the  other. 
Let  God  but  lift  the  veil  from  the   human  spirit  and  appear 
before  it  and  within  it,  the  infinite  to  the  finite,  the  perfect  to 
the  imperfect ;  and  by  their  co-presence  and  their  contrast, 
the  self-consciousness,  whether  of  sinner  or  of  saint,  loses  its 
contentment  and  sinks  away  towards  nothingness,  while  the 
consciousness  of  Him  l)ecomes  all  in  all,  and  takes  up  into  its 
plenitude  more  than  all  that  has  been  lost.     The  humiliation 
is    no    absolute    darkness,   hopelessly   there    upon    its   own 
account,  but,  like  an  eclipse,  the  witness  of  a  flood  of  light, 
around  ;  the  shadow  of  the  earthly  nature,  whose  very  depth 
measures  the  heavenly  brightness  by  which  it  is  cast.     Hence 
the  feeling  of  failure  and  the  sadness  of  evil  are  attended  by 
an  absorbing  faith  in  the  Divine  perfection  which  rebukes  and 
cancels  thsir  despair,  and  tlings  them  out  of  the  sorrows  of 
self  into  the  embrace  of  God.     If  it  be  the  revelation  of  the 
Divine  holiness  whii-h  fills  mc  witli  the  sense  of  sin,  and  of 
eternal  love  which  makes  me  know  my  selfishness,  the  glory 


462  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  I  v. 

which  I  see  lifts  me  from  the  contrition  which  I  feel ;  and 
there  is  healing  in  the  very  light  that  shows  my  woe.  It  is 
no  accident  then,  and  no  inward  contradiction,  that  the  peni- 
tential mood  of  Christendom  should  be  but  the  prelude  to  the 
joy  of  Eedemption ;  that  the  discovery  of  alienation  should  be 
the  first  sign  of  reunion ;  and  that  the  prophets  of  terror 
should  melt  into  the  organs  of  Pity  and  Grace.  It  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  religion  to  detect  the  actual  disharmony,  and 
proclaim  the  possible  harmony,  between  the  human  spirit  and 
the  Divine. 

In  every  doctrine  of  redemption,  the  provision  for  recovery 
will  correspond  to  the  i^reconception  of  the  ill ;  and  the 
Saviour's  work  will  be  measured  by  the  ruin  he  has  to  reverse, 
the  wrongs  to  redress,  the  spoiled  ideals  to  reinstate.  This 
dark  side  of  the  world  presented  by  no  means  the  same 
aspect  to  all  sections  of  the  early  Church ;  and  its  variations 
were  concomitant  with  those  which  we  have  noticed  in  the 
theory  of  Christ's  person.  To  the  twelve  apostles  the  range 
of  evil  was  ethnological,  and  divided  Gentile  from  true  Israelite ; 
to  Paul  it  was  human,  and  divided  the  natural  from  the 
spiritual  man  ;  to  the  fourth  evangelist  it  was  cosmical,  and 
divided  the  devilish  agency  in  the  universe  from  the  Divine. 
And  the  offices  of  redemption  received  corresponding  measures 
of  extension ;  having  an  interest,  in  the  first  case,  for  a 
people  ;  in  the  second,  for  mankind  ;  in  the  third,  for  the 
whole  creation.  Under  each  mythological  form  was  couched 
the  confession  how  deeply,  in  minds  of  various  scope,  the 
religion  of  Jesus  had  penetrated  the  conscience,  and  with 
what  force  it  had  touched  the  trembling  strings. 

In  his  attempt  to  discriminate  these  three  types  of  doctrine, 
and  still  more  to  exhibit  their  order  of  development,  the 
historical  critic  meets  with  serious  difficulties  from  the  defective 
sources  of  information  on  which  he  must  rely.  It  seems  a 
plain  enough  rule  to  take  the  Synoptists  and  the  Book  of 
Acts  as  his  authority  for  the  teaching  of  the  original  body 
of  Jerusalem  disciples;  the  undisputed  letters  of  Paul  as 
embodying  the  first  Gentile  gospel  ;  and  the  Johannine 
writings  as  giving  the  later  modifications  of  the  Alexandrian 
school.     But  in  the  second  case  only  is  direct  contact  gained 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES    OF    THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  463 

with  the  sole  authentic  guide ;  and  after  following  him 
through  his  four  primary  letters  to  the  Galatians,  Corinthians, 
and  Eomans,  the  reader  is,  on  some  points,  still  held  in 
suspense  till  he  decides  how  far  he  may  invoke  the  witness  of 
the  less  certain  Pauline  texts.  In  the  case  of  the  Johannine 
writings  (excluding  the  Apocalypse)  the  conclusions  yielded 
by  the  Gospel  are  by  no  means  identical  with  those  required 
by  the  Epistles.  And  though  the  synoptical  gospels  and  the 
Book  of  Acts  no  doubt  contain  the  doctrinal  conceptions  of 
the  earliest  disciples,  it  is  certain  that  they  contain  much  else 
that  is  due  to  afterthoughts  of  the  apostolic  and  post-apostolic 
age  :  the  writings  assigned  to  Luke,  in  particular,  bearing 
marks,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  Pauline  spirit,  and  on  the 
other,  of  a  time  when  Pauline  controversies  were  already  laid 
to  rest.  So  that  the  only  gospel  of  redemption  which  we 
know  at  first  hand  from  its  own  preacher  is  that  of  the  apostle 
of  the  Gentiles ;  and  into  that  of  his  predecessors  we  gain 
insight,  more  by  subtracting  the  distinctive  features  which  he 
himself  accentuated,  than  by  any  extant  report  authentically 
theirs.  This  subtraction  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Acts  has 
so  far  done  for  us  with  the  advantage  of  his  near  point  of 
view,  that  we  may  reasonably  rely  on  his  representation  of 
the  first  preaching  of  Peter  and  his  companions  in  Jerusalem. 
Nor  is  it  impossible  for  the  comparative  critic  of  the  synoptists 
to  remove  into  the  margin  the  vestiges  of  later  thought,  and 
gain  a  detached  view  of  the  state  of  mind  which  the  disciples 
carried  from  the  scene  of  the  Cross  to  that  of  the  Piesurrection. 
An  unprejudiced  use  of  these  aids  sets  before  us,  in  clear  lines, 
the  growth  and  the  differences  of  the  prevalent  conception 
respecting  tlie  nature  and  range  of  the  redeeming  work  of 
Christ. 

In  the  eye  of  the  Jewish  Christian  the  alienation  of  men 
from  God  was  an  afiair  of  race,  with  its  concomitant  in 
ancient  times,  the  inherited  religion,  and,  but  for  one  national 
exception,  it  would  have  been  universal  and  hopeless.  As  he 
looked  over  the  world,  it  divided  itself  before  him,  much  as  it 
does  now  in  the  view  of  the  orthodox  missionary  ;  the  heathen 
nations  lost  in  their  idolatries  and  reserved  for  the  wrath  to 
come ;  and  only  the  Israel  of  God,  and  its  naturalized  citizens, 


464  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Dook  IV. 

the  chosen  remnant  of  the  faithful,  separated  as  heirs  of  his 
purposes  on  earth.*  To  the  eye  of  the  immediate  observer 
this  tremendous  distinction  in  the  statistics  of  the  Divine 
favour  was  not  apparent  on  the  surface  :  the  mark  of  the 
beast,t  and  the  saving  name,  \  were  hid  by  the  folds  of  the 
outward  dress  ;  it  was  yet  a  mixed  world  ;  and  in  the  forum 
at  Eome,  and  the  schools  of  Athens,  and  the  Museum  of 
Alexandria  and  the  colonnades  of  Antioch,  elect  and  cast-away 
jostled  each  other  on  equal  terms,  and  looked  and  spoke  and 
felt  so  much  alike  that,  without  the  assurance  of  faith,  you 
would  not  know  the  difference.  But  it  would  not  long  be  so  :§ 
the  term  was  expiring  for  the  affluence  of  the  world  to  be 
flung  into  the  lap  of  corruption  and  its  diadems  to  glisten  on 
unbelieving  brows.  The  classification  now  latent  would  soon 
be  visible  enough  ;  a  divine  crisis  was  at  hand  when  the 
elements  of  human  society  would  be  sifted  out,  the  sheep 
from  the  goats,  [i  the  wheat  from  the  chaff;  the  one  to  be  the 
first-fruits  of  a  new  and  purified  earth  ;  the  other  to  be  cleared 
out  into  the  unquenchable  fire.^  This  external  form  of 
expectation,  this  belief  that  a  Theocracy  was  about  to  be  set 
np,  introduced  by  a  great  assize  for  the  cleansing  of  the  field, 
and  gathering  the  enrolled  disciples  into  a  sacred  and  happy 
commonwealth  under  the  presidentship  of  Messiah,  is  evidently 
what  the  Jewish  Christians  meant  when  they  declared  that 
the  "Kingdom  of  heaven  was  at  hand."**  It  differed  in  no 
respect  from  the  Messianic  belief  which  all  their  compatriots 
held,  except  in  venturing  to  name  tlie  ];)erson  in  whom  it 
would  be  shortly  fulfilled.  That  Jesus  was  to  be  the  Christ 
did  not  alter  in  the  least  their  picture  of  what  the  Christ  was 
appointed  to  do.  Of  this  we  have  the  clearest  proof  in  the 
resort  of  Christian  evangelists  and  prophets  to  Jewish  apoca- 
lyptic writings  for  the  expression  of  their  own  Messianic 
visions,  and  even  for  their  version  of  what  Jesus  himself 
must  have  said  or  meant  to  say.  The  eschatological  discourses 
of  the  Passion-week  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  and  the  mass  of 
the  Book  of   Eeveiation    are    mainly   made  up  of  material 

*  Acts  ii.  39.  t  Rev.  xiv.  9.  J  Rev.  xiv.  1. 

§  Luke  xii.  46.  II  j^att.  xxv.  32,  33.  11  Matt.  iii.  12. 

**  Mark  i.  15  ;  Luke  xix.  11,  xxi.  31. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  465 

common  to  both  religions  ere  thej^  finally  parted  ;  and  present 
the  same  succession  of  scenes  as  that  which  passes  before  the 
reader  of  the  Book  of  Enoch  and  the  fom-th  of  Ezra ;  the 
confederation  of  all  the  Pagan  powers  against  Messiah,  and 
their  total  overthrow  ;  the  opening  of  the  valley  of  Hinnom  to 
swallow  them  in  its  fires,  while  the  disciples  live  happily  in 
sight  of  them  on  the  hills  and  around  the  temples  of  Jeru- 
salem ;  the  return  to  life  of  pious  Israelites  to  share  the 
glorious  reign,  be  it  of  a  thousand  or  (as  Ezra  has  it)  of  four 
hundred  years  ;  and  then,  the  winding  up  of  even  this  last 
stage  of  terrestrial  history  and,  after  final  judgment  by  God 
in  person  over  the  whole  universe,  human  and  superhuman, 
and  the  casting  of  Death  and  Hades  themselves  into  the  lake 
of  fire,  the  emergence  of  a  new  heaven  and  new  earth  where 
immortals  alone  shall  dwell,  and  God  shall  be  all  in  all.  Even 
that  eternal  scene,  when  the  Kingdom  of  Messiah  was  over, 
delivered  up  into  the  hands  of  the  Father,  was  conceived  of  as 
exclusive  to  the  believers,  and  none  were  to  enter  whose  names 
were  not  of  the  true  Israel  of  God  and  on  the  roll  of  the 
Lamb. 

What  then  could  be  the  rcdccmiur/  function  of  Christ,  working 
within  the  conditions  of  this  picture  ?  From  ichat  could  he 
redeem?  From  forfeiture  of  all  share  in  the  glories  of  Messiah's 
reign.  Ilis  missionaries  were  sent  forth  with  the  summons  to 
"  repentance  "  as  the  condition  of  "  remission  of  sins  "  ;  and 
charged,  if  their  message  Avas  rejected,  to  shake  oft"  the  dust  of 
their  feet,  with  the  warning,  "  Nevertheless  be  sure  of  this, 
that  the  kingdom  is  come  nigh  " ;  *  and  "  unless  your  righteous- 
ness exceed  the  righteousness  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye 
shall  in  no  wise  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  t  Into 
wiiat  could  he  redeem '?  Into  the  citizenship  of  that  kingdom. 
Hence  the  exhortation,  "  Piepcnt,  and  be  baptized  every  one  of 
you  in  the  name  of  Jesus  unto  the  remission  of  your  sins," 
and  "save  3'ourselves  from  this  crooked  generation."  I  Whom 
could  he  redeem?  Not  any  in  the  vast  Gentile  world,  em- 
braced as  it  was  by  a  hard  and  fast  line  cutting  it  oft'  from 
the  promise  ;  nor  could  any  name  thence  pass  on  to  the  register 
of  life,  unless  by  prior  naturalization  in  the  family  of  Jacob. 

•  Luke  X.  11.  +  Matt.  v.  20.  *  Acts  ii.  38,  40. 

H  n 


466  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

It  was  "  the  God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac,  and  of  Jacob,  the  God 
of  our  fathers  "  who  "  had  glorified  his  servant  Jesus,"  and 
"  thus  fulfilled  the  things  which  he  foreshowed  by  the  mouth  of 
all  his  prophets."  "  Let  therefore  the  house  of  Israel  know 
assuredly,  that  God  hath  made  this  Jesus,  whom  ye  crucified, 
both  Lord  and  Christ."  "  To  you  is  the  promise,  and  to  your 
children,  with  as  many  of  those  that  are  afar  off  as  the  Lord 
our  God  shall  call  unto  him."  *  The  redemption  of  this  laracl 
the  appointed  Prince  and  Saviour  was  now  commissioned  to 
effect ;  chiefly,  when  he  came  to  take  his  power,  by  gathering 
them  from  the  mixed  world  into  his  commonwealth  ;  but, 
meanwhile,  by  sending  them  notice  of  his  approach,  giving 
them  time  to  prepare  their  hearts  and  stand  ready  till  the 
hour  struck.  Thus,  the  main  act  in  the  drama  of  redemption 
lies  in  the  future ;  and  the  preluding  notice  which  his  jmst 
has  left  consists  of  two  parts :  (1)  his  living  ministry  and 
personal  warning  that  a  diviner  age  was  about  to  dawn  :  a 
warning  so  certain  to  be  fruitless  that,  as  it  drew  to  its  close, 
he  wept  over  the  unheeding  city,  saying,  "  If  thou  hadst  known 
in  this  thy  day,  even  thou,  the  things  which  belong  unto 
peace !  but  now  they  are  hid  from  thine  eyes."  t  (2)  His 
dying  sacrifice  of  himself,  which  withdrew  him  from  the  world 
till  the  warning  had  had  time  to  work.  There  was  yet  an 
interval  of  Divine  longsuffering  ere  the  account  was  closed  : 
*'  Eepent,  therefore,  "  might  Peter  well  say,  "  and  turn  again, 
that  your  sins  may  be  blotted  out,  that  so  there  may  come 
seasons  of  refreshment  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord ;  and 
that  he  may  send  the  Christ  who  hath  been  appointed  for  you, 
even  Jesus,  whom  the  heaven  must  receive  until  the  times  of 
the  restoration  of  all  things,  whereof  God  hath  spoken  by  the 
mouth  of  his  holy  prophets  which  have  been  since  the  world 
began."  t  Those  who  had  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  his  voice  upon 
the  hills  or  in  the  streets,  who  had  rejected  and  despised  him, 
and  whom,  if  he  had  set  up  his  kingdom  at  once,  he  would 
have  been  unable  to  admit,  could  not  fail,  if  they  had  since 
seen  their  error  and  taken  refuge  in  the  Christian  brotherhood, 
to  feel  that  their  hour  of  repentance  had  been  an  hour  of 
salvation,  that  they  must  have  perished  if  he  had  not,  and 

*  Acts  ii.  39.  t  Luke  xix.  41,  42.  J  Acts  iii.  19-21. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES    OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  467 

that,  but  for  his  cross  and  its  delay,  there  had  for  them  been 
no  redemption. 

For  the  exercise  of  this  function,  the  attributes  of  the 
ancient  prophets  and  the  will  of  pure  self-sacrifice  were  alone 
required.  It  made  no  demand  on  him  which  human  nature, 
kindled  by  the  spirit  of  God,  and  dedicated  to  the  love  of  man, 
was  incompetent  to  render.  To  teach  the  truth,  to  win  over  to 
the  good,  to  snatch  from  blind  illusions,  to  be  patient  with  the 
froward  and  stricken  lest  they  die, — all  this  is  not  beyond  the 
province  of  the  man  of  God,  and  had  been  exemplified  long- 
ago  in  the  history  or  the  visions  of  the  elder  times.  There  is 
here  no  magic  office  needing  an  Agent  superhuman  or  divine. 
Accordingly,  this  Jewish-Christian  conception  of  the  redeeming 
work  of  Christ  stands  in  connection  with  the  humanitarian 
doctrine  of  his  person,  and  looks  on  him  simply  as  the  last 
and  supreme  of  the  prophets.  And  so  too  the  result  which  he 
wrought  out  upon  the  minds  of  his  disciples  lay  within  the 
compass  of  humanity  ;  they  were  persuaded,  they  repented, 
they  renounced  the  world,  they  lived  in  faith,  they  formed  a 
holy  brotherhood  ;  not  indeed  without  the  helping  spirit  of 
God,  but  only  in  such  union  with  Him  as  faithful  souls  have 
always  found, — a  union  which  neither  suspends  their  nature 
nor  absorbs  it.  Human  therefore  is  the  Mediator  of  this  re- 
demption, and  human  remain  its  recipients.  In  this  feature, 
and  in  the  limitation  to  Israel  and  its  proselytes,  and  in  the 
ascendency  of  the  national  over  the  personal  idea,  the  primi- 
tive gospel  is  distinguished  from  the  later  forms  of  the  same 
doctrine. 

Totally  changed  does  the  whole  theory  become,  the  moment 
we  enter  the  school  of  Paul.  All  the  actors  in  the  drama, — 
Jew,  Gentile,  Christ  and  God,  stand  in  altered  relations  and 
fill  different  parts.  The  evil  which  demands  a  Kedeemer  is 
not  shut  up  within  the  boundary  of  the  idolatrous  nations  ; 
nor  anywhere  on  the  surface  of  the  world  is  a  line  to  be  seen 
which  parts  the  shadow  of  alienation  from  the  light  of  hope. 
Israelite  as  he  is,  a  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews,  the  apostle  can- 
not keep  all  that  is  divine  at  home,  and  fling  all  the  unre- 
conciled elements  abroad.  He  finds  the  Jewish  nature,  he 
finds  his  ov.n  nature  so  crippled  for  good,  so  compelled  to 

H   H   2 


468  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

wrestle  with  evil,  so  drawn  to  own  yet  failing  to  fulfil  the  per- 
fect law  of  God,  that  he  dare  not,  while  so  little  true  to  his 
heart's  inmost  worship,  taunt  the  Gentile  with  his  offences. 
No  ;  the  estrangement  is  nothing  outward,  that  can  be  cured 
by  a  sifting  of  mankind,  and  thrusting  the  corrupted  popula- 
tions of  unbelievers,  idolaters,  and  liars  into  the  pit  of  Sodom. 
It  is  It n man,  and  discernible  alike  in  Jerusalem  and  in  Eome  ; 
it  is  in  the  very  make  of  the  race,  and,  coming  from  Adam, 
runs  through  the  line  alike  of  Jacob  and  of  Esau.  Whilst 
men  are  moulded  of  flesh  and  blood,  the  very  material  of  their 
composition  carries  the  taint  of  sin  and  makes  them  due  to 
death,  not  by  any  arbitrary  law,  but  by  a  natural  necessity 
attaching  to  every  fabricated  creature  that  is  "of  the  earth, 
earthy." 

The  great  scale  of  the  apostle  Paul's  gospel  depended  on  his 
profound  impression  of  the  universality  of  Sin,  and  his  assured 
faith  in  a  promise  of  final  righteousness.  The  magnitude  of 
the  ruin  measured  that  of  the  restoration ;  and  if  the  one 
attested  the  broken  forces  of  the  human  will,  the  other  could 
be  looked  for  only  from  the  recreating  energy  of  God  himself. 
Through  what  personal  agent,  in  the  Pauline  theory,  he  efl'ected 
this  reconstitution  of  humanity,  has  been  explained  in  a  former 
chapter  ;  and  after  the  sketch  of  anthropological  doctrine  there 
given,  the  subjection  of  our  whole  race  to  sin  may  be  assumed 
as  the  primary  axiom  of  the  apostle's  scheme.  There  are 
questions  within  this  on  which  doubts  may  be  raised  ;  for  ex- 
ample, whether  the  sin  everywhere  present  is  a  fatality  of 
nature,  or  a  freely  incurred  guilt :  the  apostle  argues  from 
both  positions,  content  to  resolve  their  contradictions  into  the 
irresponsibility  of  God.  But  for  his  starting-point  it  is  not 
needful  to  look  with  speculative  eye  behind  the  actual  fact  of 
the  moral  condition  of  mankind :  the  Gentiles  have  a  law 
written  on  the  heart ;  the  Jews,  a  law  divinely  given  to  their 
fathers  :  both  are  flagrantly  and  universally  violated,  "  so 
that  there  is  none  righteous,  no,  not  one  " ;  "  they  have  all 
turned  aside,  and  altogether  become  unprofitable";  "every 
mouth  must  be  stopped,  and  all  the  world  brought  under  the 
judgment  of  God."  *     This  state  of  the  world,  revolting  ta 

*  Kom.  ii.  14-29,  iii.  10,  12,  19. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  469 

every  observer's  better  mind,  is  rendered  too  intelligible  by  the 
conflicts  and  humiliations  of  his  own  inner  life,  which  for  ever 
sees  what  it  fails  to  reach,  and  incurs  an  alternation  of  hope 
and  shame  more  constant  than  day  and  night.* 

Neither  as  a  Jew  nor  as  a  Pharisee  was  the  apostle  bound 
to  throw  so  dark  and  unrelieved  a  shade  upon  his  estimate  of 
the  world.  It  was  an  extension,  through  the  ideal  pieties  of 
his  own  nature,  to  Israel's  sacred  enclosure,  of  the  Hebrew 
abhorrence  of  Pagan  life  and  manners.  It  was  otherwise 
with  the  next  link  in  his  chain  of  thought,  "  The  wages  of  Sin 
is  Death. "t  This  he  derived  and  accepted  simply  as  a  dog- 
matic axiom  from  "  the  Law  and  the  Prophets,"  only  applying 
it  in  uncontemplated  ways.  From  the  fact  that  the  first 
mention  of  Death  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  is  as  the  fore- 
announced  penalty  of  transgression,  "  Of  the  tree  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil  thou  shalt  not  eat,  for  in  the  day 
that  thou  eatest  thereof  thou  shalt  surely  die,"t  it  became  a 
fixed  idea  that  there  could  be  no  sin  without  death,  and  no 
death  without  sin ;  and  the  maxim,  "the  soul  that  sinneth, 
it  shall  die,"§  was  accepted  as  the  statement  of  an  irrefrag- 
able law.  The  Divine  alternative  had  no  room  for  halting 
vdlls ;  "  I  call  earth  and  heaven  to  witness  against  you  this 
da}^  that  I  have  set  before  you  life  and  death,  the  blessing 
and  the  curse;  "||  and  "  Cursed  be  he  that  observeth  not  the 
words  of  this  law  to  do  them."^  Certain  it  is  that  the  apostle 
unconditionally  assumed  this  principle ;  affirming  both  the 
entrance  of  Death  as  the  curse  upon  sin,**  and  the  incidence 
of  the  curse  upon  every  transgressor,  t+  and  taking  the  rule 
directly  home  to  the  personal  experience  in  the  startling  words 
"  I  was  alive  apart  from  the  law  once  ;  but  when  the  com- 
mandment came.  Sin  revived,  and  I  died  :  and  the  command- 
ment, which  was  unto  life,  this  I  found  to  be  unto  death  ;  for 
shi,  taking  occasion  through  the  commandment,  beguiled  me, 
and  through  it  slew  me."  1 1  As  this  fatal  concomitant  of  sin 
completes  the  apostle's  conception  of  the  human  ruin,  and 
gives  therefore  the  measure  of  the  redemption  needed,  it  is 

'  Rom.  vii.  14-25.  t  Eom.  vi.  23.  %  Genesis  ii.  17. 

P  Ezekicl  xviii.  4.  ||  Deut.  xxx.  19.  *ii  Ibid,  xxvii.  26. 

••  Rom.  V.  12.  tt  Gal.  iii.  10. 


470  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

important  to  determine  correctly  what  range  of  ill  he  includes 
in  its  name. 

At  the  lowest  it  has  of  course  the  privative  meaning,  of  a 
cessation  of  this  life.  Even  when  it  takes  in  no  more,  it  may 
mark,  instead  of  the  actual  fact  of  cessation,  the  liability  to  it 
which  we  call  mortality ;  as  the  passage  "  In  the  day  that 
thou  eatest  thereof  thou  shalt  surely  die,"  announces,  not 
that  Adam  would  not  survive  that  day,  but  that  by  removal 
out  of  the  reach  of  the  tree  of  life,  he  would  become  subject  to 
the  law  of  all  flesh  (S-i^rjrjj  ado^).  It  was  impossible  for  this 
negative  idea  long  to  keep  the  word  to  itself ;  the  cessation  of 
life  is  followed  by  a  dissolution  of  the  body  which,  once 
known,  would  cling  to  the  thought ;  and  when  the  question 
arose  whether  these  visible  phenomena  were  all  that  war, 
happening,  or  whether  others  that  were  invisible  might  not 
also  be  occurring  to  what  had  been  invisible  in  the  living  man, 
the  answers  supplied  by  guess  or  thought  would  add  them- 
selves on  to  the  previous  conception  and  enlarge  its  significance. 
Thus,  even  in  its  literal  application,  the  word  Death  obtains 
no  slight  latitude  of  variation  in  its  meaning,  and  compels 
the  interpreter  to  ask  his  author  what  he  supposes  to  take 
place  when  a  human  life  is  closed. 

Shall  we  find  the  Pauline  conception  by  keeping  close  to  the 
naked  negative  meaning,  and  say  that  by  Death,  as  the 
penalty  of  sin,  he  understands  the  "  complete  extinction  of 
the  individual  "  '?  This  opinion,  very  ably  supported  by  M. 
Eugene  Menegoz,*  rests  on  the  assumption  that  the  apostle's 
anthropology  is  strictly  monistic, ■\'  regarding  "  the  flesh  "  not 
as  a  companion  factor  with  the  vovq,  but  as  ''the  ivliole  man"X 
whose  will,  intelligence,  and  desires  are  functions  of  it  and 
constitute  it  "  a  personality."  A  Sarkical  doctrine  of  this 
type  would  be  equivalent  to  the  modern  physiological 
materialism  ;  and  would  certainly  be  in  similar  alliance  with 
an  interpretation  of  death  as  "complete  annihilation  of  the 
individual.  "§ 

If  the  choice   lay   between   this   reading   of  the  apostle's 

*  In  his  interesting  and  valuable  treatise,  Le  Peche  et  la  Eodemption 
d'apres  St.  Paul.     1882. 

t  P-  41-  t  p.  43.  §  p.  76. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES    OF    THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  471 

thought  and  the  assumption  that  his  death-penalty  of  Sin 
contained  in  it  eternal  retributory  suffering,  exegetic  reasons, 
entirely  apart  from  moral,  would  decide  in  favour  of  the 
former.  The  Pauline  Epistles,  it  is  true,  are  not  without 
terrible  denunciations  of  Divine  displeasure  and  personal 
punishment  against  evil  doers ;  "  wrath  against  the  day  of 
wrath  and  revelation  of  the  righteous  judgment  of  God;"' 
"  unto  them  that  obey  not  the  truth  but  obey  unrighteousness,, 
wrath  and  indignation,  tribulation  and  anguish  upon  every 
soul  of  man  that  worketh  evil,  of  the  Jew  first,  and  also  of  the 
Greek  ;  for  there  is  no  respect  of  persons  with  God."*  "  The 
unrighteous  shall  not  inherit  the  kingdom  of  God;"t  but 
shall  meet  with  "  eternal  destruction  from  the  face  of  the 
Lord  and  from  the  glory  of  his  might."!  But  in  these  warn- 
ings there  is  not  a  word  which  assigns  these  awards  to  scenes 
beyond  this  world.  They  obviously  refer  for  the  most  part  to 
the  "  day  of  the  Lord," — the  reappearance  of  Christ,  expected 
without  delay, — "  the  night  is  far  spent,  the  day  is  at  hand."§ 
And  there  is  the  less  reason  to  interpret  them  of  the  state  of 
the  wicked  after  death,  because  in  not  one  of  his  Epistles  does 
the  apostle  ever  mention  or  imply  a  resurrection  of  the  un- 
righteous :  he  contemplates  no  other  witnesses  of  that  "  great 
day  "  than  the  living  people  whom  it  should  overtake,  and  the 
departed  Christians  called  back  into  life  to  meet  it.  "Whoso- 
ever of  these  should  receive  a  sentence  of  "  eternal  destruction 
from  the  face  of  the  Lord  "  would  surely  fulfil  it  by  a  "  com- 
plete annihilation  of  the  individual."  It  must  be  owned  that 
temporal  death  gives  an  adequate  account  of  the  apostle's 
language  of  retribution  :  which,  in  truth,  is  not  more  intense 
or  appalling  than  we  find  in  the  denunciations  by  the  ancient 
prophets,  and  in  the  fearful  volley  of  curses  on  the  unfaithful 
in  the  27th  and  28th  chapters  of  .the  Book  of  Deuteronomy. 
And  the  reader  must  be  on  his  guard  against  importing  into 
the  apostle's  writings  images  and  conceptions,  associated,  it 
may  be,  with  similar  phrases,  occurring  in  other  portions  of 
the  New  Testament.  His  eschatology  is  not  free  from 
obscurity  and  self- variation ;  but  it  has  one  clear  character- 

*  Rom.  ii.  5,  8,  9.  t  1  Cor.  vi.  9. 

*  2  Thess.  i.  9  (doubtful  whether  Pauline).  §  Rom.  xiii.  12, 


472  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

istic ;  it  knows  nothing  of  any  hell,  of  any  worm  that  dieth 
not,  and  fire  that  is  not  quenched,  or  other  vision  of  infernal 
torment :  it  has  nothing  eternal  but  a  "  weight  of  glory," 
unbalanced  by  any  everlasting  shame  ;  and  if  it  is  not  without 
"  vessels  of  wrath,"  the  worst  that  it  says  of  them  is  that  they 
are  "  fitted  for  destruction."* 

But  if  the  Pauline  "Death  "  does  not  carry  in  it  so  much 
as  the  pains  of  hell,  neither,  I  believe,  is  it  reducible  to  a  mere 
blotting  out  of  the  individual.  The  alleged  "  monism  "  of  the 
apostle,  constituting  the  human  personality  of  flesh  alone, 
with  the  dissolution  of  which  all  is  gone,  rests  on  no  sufficient 
grounds.  It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  ^vx'''  I'oi^c,  and 
TTvEUjua,  are  attributed  to  man  ;  the  only  question  is,  whether 
in  suhordiyiation  to  adoL,,  as  its  properties,  or  in  any  co-ordina- 
tion with  it  as  a  separate  condition  of  the  compound  being. 
That  the  apostle  ever  set  himself  to  solve  such  a  metaphysical 
problem  and  deliberately  took  sides  upon  it,  is  inconceivable, 
unless  we  suppose  him  to  be  beforehand  with  the  antitheses  of 
scholastic  and  modern  philosophy.  But  that  his  habitual 
language,  instead  of  identifying  the  proper  Self  of  the  natural 
man  with  "  the  flesh  "  (as  understood  by  him)  invests  it 
with  the  indefeasible  though  baffled  rights  of  a  superior,  and 
plants  it  at  the  level  of  a  self-conscious  Agent  looking  down  on 
a  meaner  territory  of  impulse,  is  beyond  dispute,  and  clearly 
shows  the  answer  which  must  be  given  for  him.  "  If  what  I 
would  not,  that  I  do,  it  is  no  more  I  that  do  it,  but  Sin  that 
dwelleth  in  me.  0  wretched  man  that  I  am  !  who  shall 
deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  I  thank  God  through 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.  So  that  I  myself  with  the  mind  serve 
the  law  of  God;  but  with  the  flesh  the  law  of  Sin."f  No 
form  of  words  can  more  clearly  identify  the  "  I  myself"  with 
"  the  Mind,"  in  direct  contrast  with  "  the  flesh,"  as  "  the 
body  of  death,"  from  which  that  Self  cries  out  for  "  deliver- 
ance." No  less  marked  is  the  duality  of  our  nature,  when  the 
apostle  turns  from  the  confessions  of  inner  experience  to  the 
observation  of  character  in  the  disciples  :  marking  off  their 
respective  fields  to  the  two  opposites, — Sin  and  Christ, — he 
says,  "  If  Christ  be  in  you,  the  body  is  dead  because  of  Sin, 

*  Eom.  ix.  22.  t  Ibid.  vii.  20,  24,  25. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES  OF   THE   WORK  OF  JESUS.  473 

but  the  Si>xnt  is  life  because  of  righteousness."'*     Here  he  no 
■doubt  speakS;  not  of  the  natural  man,  but  of  the  Christian 
touched  by  the  fellowship  of  Christ ;  and  the  "  spirit  "  may  be 
taken  to  mean,  not  the  personal  soul  of  the  recipient,  but  the 
indwelling   presence  of  his  Sanctifier.     Sanctifier,    however, 
there  cannot  be  without  a  suliject  susceptible  of  sanctification  ; 
the  spirit  that  comes  cannot  be  the  spirit  that  receives  ;  and 
this  it  is  that  is  quickened  to  life  and  light  l)y  the  influx  of 
grace  from  the  communion  of  Christ.     Such  a  partition  of 
human  nature,  surrendering  the  body  to  the  operations  of  sin, 
and  the  spirit  to  those  of  Christ  and  his  righteousness,  is 
surely  not  what  might  be  expected  from  a  monistic  thinker. 
Nor  would  he  be  more  consistent  if,  in  dealing  with  an  offender 
against  Christian  purity,  he  proposed,  like  the  apostle  with 
the  Corinthian  transgressor,  to  "  deliver   him  to  Satan  for 
the  destruction  of  his  flesh,  that  the  spirit  may  be  saved  in 
the  day  of  the  Lord  Jesus." t     Whatever  be  intended  by  this 
apostolic  act  of  discipline,  there  are  two  points  indisputably 
clear  ;  that  the  flesh  which  is  destroyed  cannot  carry  as  its 
property  the  spirit  which  is  saved ;  and  that  the  spirit  saved 
cannot  be  the  spirit  of  the  Saviour,  but  is  the  personal  essence 
of  the  lapsed  man.     There  is  therefore  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
Paul  distinguished,  in  the  constitution  of  humanity,  between 
a  perishable  organism  which  closed  its  history  with  the  last 
breath,  and  an  element  susceptible  of  survival  and  ulterior 
development,  and  opposed  them  to  each  other  as  the  flesh  and 
the  spirit  of  a  man.     Else  he  would  have  been  a  Sadducee, 
and  we  should  never  have  heard  of  his  Pharisaic  challenge  to 
King  Agrippa,  "  Why  should  it  be  thought  a  thing  incrediljle 
with  you,  that  God  should  raise  the  dead"?  ":^  for  it  is  as  a 
hope   given   to   the   fathers,    and   including  them  and  their 
historic  tribes,  that  it  commends  itself  to  him  in  the  resurrec- 
tion which  he  attests  and  proclaims.     To  render  individual 
resurrection  possible,  the  soul's  essential  type,  moulded  in  the 
past,  must  abide  as  the  germ  of  the  new  life  in  the  future. 
And  hence,  unless  among  embalming  nations,  the  disposal  01 
the  corpse  was  not  conceived  to  give  complete  account  of  the 
lodging  of  the  dead  ;  subterranean  chambers  were  provided  in 
*  Eom.  viii.  10.  t  1  Cor.  v.  5.  +  Acts  xxvi.  8.  ■ 


474  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  iv. 

Hhcijl  or  Hades,  as  tanying-places  of  faint  survival  in  nocturnal 
existence,  till  possibl}-  a  burst  of  sunrise  should  invade  the 
gloom,  and  v/ake  the  sleej^ing  souls  to  a  new  morning,  and 
weave  around  them  vestments  of  etherial  light  and  glorious 
form.  Can  we  fail  to  see  the  traces  of  this  view  of  Death  in 
the  apostle's  yearning,  amid  his  many  trials,  for  the  immortal 
life  ?  "  We  know  that,  if  the  earthly  house  of  our  tabernacle 
be  dissolved,  we  have  a  building  from  God,  a  house  not  made 
with  hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens.  For  verily  in  this  we 
groan,  longing  to  be  clothed  upon  with  our  habitation  which 
is  from  heaven  ;  if  so  be  that  being  clothed  we  shall  not  be 
found  naked.  For  indeed  we  that  are  in  this  tabernacle  do 
groan,  being  burdened  ;  not  for  that  we  would  be  unclothed, 
but  that  we  would  be  clothed  upon,  that  what  is  mortal  may 
be  swallowed  up  of  life."*  He  could  wish  for  release  from  an 
overburdened  existence  ;  not  indeed  to  be  left  among  those 
v.'hom  Death  will  only  strip  to  the  -^vyj]  and  leave  "naked  ;  " 
but  to  emerge  into  the  new  birth  of  the  children  of  the 
resurrection,  and  put  on  the  likeness  of  Christ's  "  glorious 
body."  The  apostle  evidently  thinks  that,  when  the  cast-off 
clothes  of  the  dissolving  organism  are  gone,  there  is  a 
psychical  remainder,  admitting  of  being  either  let  alone  as  a 
bare  unrealized  possibilitj'  of  ulterior  life,  or  quickened  by  the 
breath  of  heavenly  powers,  and  borne  off  into  conditions  of 
endless  spiritual  growth. 

In  this  view,  Death,  as  the  penalty  of  Sin,  would  be  confine- 
ment of  the  i/^i^X'/  ii^  perpetuity  to  Hades,  bereft  of  organs, 
whether  of  activity  or  of  feeling.  And  redemption  from  it 
would  be  a  repeal  of  the  decree  of  perpetuity,  and  a  provision 
for  resuscitating  the  sleeper,  if  already  there,  or  imparting  to 
him,  if  still  in  the  sunshine,  such  grace  and  spirit  of  holiness 
as  may  neutralize  the  power  of  sin,  and  mark  him  out  as 
among  those  whom  God  will  raise.  It  is  surprising  how  little 
the  apostle's  imagination  dwelt  upon  the  line  of  division,  in 
the  great  assembly  of  the  dead,  between  those  that  would  be 
taken  and  those  that  would  be  left,  in  the  day  of  the  Parusia. 
He  tells  the  relative  order  of  jDrocedure  as  between  the 
disciples  that  had  fallen  asleep  and  the  survivors  upon  earth ; 

*  2  Cor.  V.  1-4. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  475 

that  "  the  dead  m  Christ  "  shall  rise  first,  and  that  the  living 
undergo  their  change  ;*  but  he  is  absolutely  silent  respecting 
the  countless  multitude  of  generations  gone,  who  are  not 
included  in  either  class,  though  we  throw  in,  as  we  probably 
must,  all  the  prior  Israel  among  "the  dead  in  Christ."  The 
omission  is  strange  in  the  missionary  of  the  Gentiles  and  the 
preacher  of  a  universal  gospel,  who,  when  treating  of  his 
contemporaries,  had  no  hesitation  in  admitting  to  "  eternal 
life"  Jew  and  Gentile  alike  "who  sought  for  glory,  honour 
and  incorruption,  by  patient  continuance  in  well-doing  ;  "t 
and  by  making  the  most  of  his  statement  that  the  Gentiles 
who  "  do  by  nature  the  things  of  the  law  "  "show  the  work 
of  the  law  written  in  their  hearts,"  and  pass  judgment  of 
approval  and  disapproval,  we  might  infer,  if  we  looked  no 
further,  that  the  righteous  heathen  of  generations  past  had  a 
place,  along  with  the  Israelites,  in  his  "  eternal  life."  But 
when  he  insists  that  no  possible  conformity  to  LaAv,  natural 
or  revealed,  can  invest  either  Jew  or  Gentile  with  any  availing 
righteousness,  and  that  the  indispensable  condition  of  redemp- 
tion is  a  Faith  possible  by  anticipation  in  Abraham  and  his 
seed,  impossible  to  the  Pagan  wIkj  had  "  exchanged  the  truth 
of  God  for  a  lie,"t  it  is  clear  that  his  ethnic  hope  cannot  go 
behind  his  own  generation,  and  refers  only  to  the  converts  of 
his  own  and  his  fellow-labourers'  toil. 

The  Pauline  "  Death  "  is  summed  up  thus  :  To  all,  bodily 
dissolution  ;  to  tlw  redremcd,  a  waiting  in  Hades  till  re-inves- 
titure with  life ;  to  t]te  unredeemed,  permanent  disappearance 
in  Hades. 

In  this  interpretation  of  "death  "  in  its  literal  meaning  as 
the  ultimate  effect  of  sin,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  the 
inclusion  within  the  connotation  of  the  word,  of  other  effects, 
simply  moral,  on  the  way  to  the  last  issue,  or  even  the  appli- 
cation of  it  to  these  alone.  The  blunted  affections,  the 
drifting  will,  the  slavery  to  passion,  the  proneness  to  hats, 
which  mark  the  descent  down  the  ways  of  sin,  are  treated  as 
the  signs  and  beginnings  of  death  ;  they  are  in  fact  that 
withering-up  of  the  soul  in  its  innermost  essence,  which  will 
bring   it    to    Hades   as    a   virtual  but  lost  possibility  of  life. 

-  1  Thoss.  iv.  IG,  17.  f  Kom.  ii.  7.  :;:  Ibid.  i.  25. 


476  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

There  is  therefore  nothing  overstrained  in  the  phrases  which 
denote  these  threatening  antecedents  of  spiritual  bhght : 
''  She  that  giveth  herself  to  pleasure  is  dead,  while  she 
liveth  :"*  "  The  carnal  mind  is  death,  but  the  spiritual 
mind  is  hfe  and  peace  :"t  "He  that  loveth  not  abideth  in 
death -yx  and  the  prodigal's  return  is  welcomed  with  the 
words,  "  This  thy  brother  was  dead^  and  is  alive  again  ;  and 
was  lost,  and  is  found  :"§  and  the  two  meanings,  the  moral 
and  the  literal,  are  brought  together  in  the  saying,  "  Let  the 
dead  bury  their  dead."|| 

Such  was  the  "condemnation,"  the  "  curse,"  the  alienation 
from  God,  the  penalty  of  violated  law,  natural  or  spiritual, 
under  which  the  sons  of  Adam  lay.  Eedemption  from  it 
required  the  reversal  of  it  all ;  riddance  of  Sin,  and  mortifica- 
tion of  the  flesh  as  its  seat ;  creation  of  new  life,  and  quick- 
ening of  the  Spirit,  as  its  element ;  reconciliation  with  God, 
by  reparation  for  the  past ;  and  reunion  wdth  him  in  relations 
of  peace  and  righteousness.  What  are  the  resources  which 
the  apostle  deems  available  for  the  solution  of  this  problem  ? 

One  thing  is  certain  to  him :  Man,  as  he  is,  can  answer  no 
appeal  for  self-redemption ;  his  present  nature  has  long 
enough  been  tried  and  found  wanting,  and  the  experiment 
must  come  to  an  end.  The  evils  of  his  case  arise  from  his 
constitution,  and  will  never  cease  till  he  is  reconstituted  in 
proportions  truer  to  the  Divine  model  which  he  dishonours 
and  distorts.  Now  that  he  has  lost  his  Paradise,  it  is  as  vain 
to  call  for  repentance,  as  to  cry,  "  Turn  ye,  turn  ye,"  to  the 
fallen  angels  flung  from  heaven.  He  can  no  more  lift  himself 
than  the  bird  can  fly  without  an  atmosphere.  Nothing  short 
of  a  re-creation  of  him,  casting  off  the  dross  of  accumulated 
sins,  and  charging  his  nature  with  the  tension  of  new  affec- 
tions, will  be  of  any  avail.  The  rescue,  therefore,  must  come 
from  superhuman  power  ;  the  initiative  must  be  with  heaven  ; 
iliere  must  provision  be  sought  for  the  fresh  departure. 

How  Paul,  after  his  "heavenly  vision,"  found  there  this 
new  departure  for  humanity  in  the  "  second  Adam,"  reserved 
through   all   ages,    and   now  installed   as   the   Head   of  the 

*  1  Tim.  V.  6.  t  Rom.  viii.  6.  X  '^  Zo\\q.  iii.  11. 

§  Liike  XV.  32.  1|  Matt.  viii.  22. 


Ghap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  477 

spiritual  family  of  man,  and  how,  by  inward  union  with  the 
Father  and  the  Son,  he  and  his  converts  "  escaped  from  the 
bondage  of  corruption  into  the  glorious  liljerty  of  the  children 
of  God,"*  has  been  already  shown.  It  remains  to  be  seen 
what  specific  part,  in  the  apostle's  view,  the  Cross,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  ordinary  modes  of  death,  bore  in  j^reparing 
for  these  effects  of  the  resurrection. 

In  his  persecuting  days,  Saul  the  Pharisee  had  intensely 
shared  the  popular  aversion  to  the  new  Galilean  sect,  and 
regarded,  not  only  with  social  scorn,  but  with  religious  horror, 
the  claim,  on  behalf  of  one  executed  as  a  rebel  and  blasphemer, 
to  be  the  Messiah  of  Israel.  If  death  in  any  form  was  the 
penalty  and  evidence  of  sin,  who  could  deny  that  ^ncli  a  death 
raised  the  evidence  to  the  highest  pitch,  and  exhibited  a 
transgressor  offensive  to  the  justice  of  man  as  well  as  God? 
Kightly  did  the  people  who  knew  the  Law  throw  in  the  face  of 
the  Galilean  agitators  the  word  of  God,  "  He  that  is  hanged 
is  accursed  of  God  ;  "f  and  was  it  not  revolting  to  see  this 
besotted  rabble  pointing  to  sticli  an  ol)ject  as  the  Holy  One 
of  the  Most  High  ?  How  could  he  curse  his  own  Messiah  '?■ 
This  was  the  "scandal  of  the  cross  "  which  Saul  also  wielded 
against  the  disciples  from  city  to  city,  and  which  "  made  him 
exceeding  mad  against  them."  As  he  dashes  at  one  of  the 
nests  of  these  low  fanatics,  something  suddenly  arrests  him : 
what  has  he  seen,  or  heard,  or  thought,  that  prostrates,  and 
calms  and  silences  him '?  The  Crucified  Blasphemer  has 
come  to  him  and  looked  on  him  with  holy  eyes,  and  appealed 
to  him  with  a  grace  and  pity  so  Divine,  as  to  tell  him  not 
only  that  the  dead  was  living  and  the  accursed  blessed,  but 
that  the  "  malefactor  "  was  the  "  Son  of  God."  His  favourite 
proof  is  not  only  confuted  but  reversed  :  instead  of  insisting, 
'  the  malefactor  and  curse  cannot  be  the  Messiah  of  heaven,' 
he  has  now  to  say,  '  the  Messiah  from  heaven  is  no  malefac- 
tor and  curse ;  on  the  contrar}-,  it  was  not  possible  for  him  to 
be  holden  of  death,  and  he  was  snatched  from  it  by  the  Lord 
of  life  who  conjoins  immortality  and  holiness.' 

As  the  curse  of  the  cross  thus  lost  all  ai)plication  to  a 
victim  declared  individually  sinless,  another  meaning  was 
*  Rom.  viii.  21.  f  Deut.  xxi.  23. 


478  SEVERANCE   uF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

needed  for  it ;  and  vras  found  in  the  apostle's  conception  of 
Messiah  as  the  Head  of  a  ne^v  humanity  which  should  set 
aside  the  failure  of  the  Adamic  race,  and  fulfil  at  last  the 
Divine  idea.  Under  this  aspect  the  arS-ow/roc  £^  ohnavov  at  the 
world's  end,  like  the  aV^ptuTToc  Ik.  yjjcat  its  beginning,  became 
a  representative  impersonation  of  his  collective  race  ;  so  that 
Avhat  he  did  and  what  he  suffered  was  no  less  theirs  in  being 
his,  than  the  acts  and  treatment  of  a  sovereign  are  responsi- 
bilities incurred  and  received  by  his  nation.  An  unexpected 
light  is  thus  thrown  upon  the  Cross  :  the  sufferer  there  belonged 
to  both  the  earthly  and  the  heavenly  type  of  Man,  and  stood 
between  the  closing  term  of  the  one  and  the  inception  of  the 
other ;  he  had  the  susceptible  affections  and  the  mortality  of 
the  former,  without  its  sin  ;  he  had  the  spirit  of  holiness  and 
capacity  for  immortality  of  the  latter.  As  intermediary  be- 
tween the  ages,  he  has  to  clear  the  past,  and  to  inaugurate  the 
future.  To  wind  up  the  sad  tale  of  Adam's  dynasty,  he  takes 
on  himself  the  penal  curse  due  to  all  but  him  :  to  open  the 
new  life  of  spiritual  humanity,  he  passes  through  the  agony 
of  shame,  into  the  hands  of  Him  who  raises  the  dead  and  had 
never  failed  to  hear  his  prayer  and  answer  his  trust.  And 
thus  were  enacted  and  unified  in  his  person  the  penal  expiation 
of  past  sins  of  his  earthly  kindred,  and  the  emergence  into 
undying  union  with  the  Father  of  spirits  and  the  home  of 
saints. 

Under  the  influence  of  this  mode  of  thought,  the  apostle 
undoubtedly  regarded  the  death  of  Christ  as  incurred,  not  only 
for  our  advantage,  but  in  our  stead  ;  what  was  legally  due  to 
the  collectivity  being  concentrated  upon  the  personal  Head. 
"Him  who  knew  no  sin  God  made  to  be  sin  on  our  behalf; 
that  we  might  become  the  righteousness  of  God  in  liim."*  In 
no  other  passage  is  the  express  reference  here  found  to  the 
sinlessness  of  Christ  repeated,  though  implied  perhaps  in  the 
title  by  which  he  is  named.  Elsewhere,  it  is  not  expressly 
the  individual  holiness  of  Jesus,  but  the  impersonation  of 
humanity  in  Messiah,  in  virtue  of  which  his  experience  and 
his  essence  became  ours  ;  the  many  were  included  in  the  one ; 
they  died  in  his  death,  and  lived  anew  in  his  resurrection,  and 

*  2  Cor.  V.  21. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  479 

were  taken  up  into  his  relations  \Yith  the  Eternal  Father. 
"  We  thus  judge,  that  one  died  for  all ;  therefore  all  died : 
and  he  died  for  all,  that  they  which  live  should  no  longer  live 
unto  themselves,  but  unto  him  who  for  their  sakes  died  and 
rose  again."*  The  discharge  which  we  could  never  work  out 
was  effected  for  us  :  "  While  we  were  yet  weak,  in  due  season 
Christ  died  for  the  ungodly;"  "God  commendeth  his  own 
love  towards  us  in  that,  while  we  were  \%i  sinners,  Christ  died 
for  us  ;"  and  "  if,  while  we  were  enemies,  we  were  reconciled 
to  God  through  the  death  of  his  Son,  much  more,  being  recon- 
ciled, shall  we  be  saved  by  his  life."t 

That  the  apostle  did  not  shrink  from  this  conception  of 
vicariuus  sin  and  retribution  seems  strange  to  us,  schooled  as 
we  are  in  individualism  and  its  lonely  responsibility.  The 
transference  of  guilt  from  one  individual  to  another  standing  on 
the  same  j)lane  involves  a  contradiction  of  the  first  principle  of 
morals.  This,  however,  which  alone  is  proper  vicariousness, 
is  not  exactly  what  was  present  to  the  apostle's  thought ;  nor 
is  it  conceivable  that  he  would  have  deemed  it  possible  for 
Peter  to  take  on  himself  the  guilt  of  Judas,  or  for  John  to 
relieve  Peter  of  his  three  denials.  To  him  the  Crucified,  as 
revealed  in  his  resurrection,  was  no  mere  individual  sample  of 
the  sons  of  men,  related  to  those  whom  he  gathered  as  James, 
and  Andrew,  and  Philip  to  one  another  :  but,  as  the  realizer 
of  God's  idea  for  this  type  of  being,  he  was  the  essence  of 
humanity  itself,  and  could  speak  and  act  and  suffer  for  it  all : 
as  vice  versa  all  its  members  could  find  themselves  in  him. 
This  eTSoc  of  Man  it  is,  impersonated  and  dramatized,  that  the 
apostle  sets  up  as  redeemer  of  the  individual ;  and  if  he  treats 
the  wounds  of  the  whole  genus  as  equivalent  to  those  of  each 
member,  and  the  glory  of  the  whole  as  extending  to  each,  he 
adopts  a  mode  of  thought  familiar  in  ancient  times,  and  not 
consciously  involving  the  moral  paradox  of  vicarious  character. 

Wherever  indeed  the  spirit  of  elan  exists  in  anything  like 
the  intensity  with  which  it  still  keeps  possession  of  Israel,  the 
intercommunity  of  responsibility  naturally  leads  to  som.ething 
verging  on  the  principle  of  moral  substitution  and  justice  by 
average.     It  does  not  shock  the  conscience  of  such  a  com- 

'■  2  Cor.  V.  li,  15.  t  Rom.  v.  G,  8,  10. 


48o  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

munity,  that  "  the  sins  of  the  fathers  should  be  visited  upon 
the  children  to  the  third  and  fourth  generation  ;"  or  that  the 
righteousness  of  a  small  minoritj^  should  ward  off  the  retribu- 
tion impending  over  its  guilty  multitude.  And  if,  by  a  wrong 
incidence  of  suffering,  it  should  come  to  pass  that  precisely 
the  most  faithful  and  saintly  incurred  the  stripes  and  scorn 
which  they,  of  all  men,  were  furthest  from  deserving,  it 
seemed  incredible  to  the  pious  observer  that  so  much  merit 
should  be  wasted  and  misspent ;  and  he  persuaded  himself 
that  it  would  avail,  as  the  righteous  themselves  would  wish, 
for  the  erring  kindred  or  country  to  which  they  belonged,  and 
lighten  the  too  heavy  debt  of  their  blinded  persecutors.  The 
"  servant  of  the  Lord "  (be  he  Israel  as  a  people,  outcast 
among  the  misguided  nations,  or  some  true  prophet  of  their 
own  who  cannot  get  believed)  may  well  be  "a  man  of  sorrows 
and  acquainted  with  grief,  despised  and  rejected  of  men," 
"taken  away  by  oppressor's  judgment"  and  "led  to  the 
slaughter;"  and  the  beholders  may  "esteem  him  stricken, 
smitten  of  God  and  afflicted;"  but  though  he  "is  numbered 
with  the  transgressors,"  he  is  "  wounded  for  our  transgres- 
sions, bruised  for  our  iniquities ;  the  chastisement  of  our 
peace  was  upon  him,  and  with  his  stripes  we  are  healed."* 
Interpret  as  we  may  the  intended  application  of  this  touching 
and  sublime  picture,  it  shows  that,  in  the  author's  mind,  the 
Providential  distribution  of  suffering  was  freed  from  the  limits 
of  hard  juridical  rules,  and  thrown  open  to  the  bold  antino- 
mianism  and  spiritual  mysticism  of  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles. 
The  expiatory  clearance  of  the  Adamic  past  was  a  transac- 
tion wholly  mediatorial,  effected,  so  to  speak,  behind  men's 
backs,  or  while  they  slept.  The  agents  in  it  were  God  and 
Christ,  by  whose  concurrent  purpose  it  was  brought  about. 
Though  the  apostle  freely  attributes  it  to  either,  he  must  have 
regarded  the  initiative  as  with  the  Father,  as  the  creator  of 
the  preexistent  spiritual  Adam,  and  the  preordainer  of  the 
whole  world-scheme  through  its  series  of  ages  ;  ages,  that  first 
reveal  his  idea  only  in  its  frustration,  and  then  break  into  the 
glorious  sequel  which  is  to  fulfil  it :  "according  to  the  eternal 
purpose  which  he  purposed  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord."!     The 

*  Isaiah  liii.  +  Eph.  iii.  11. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  481 

originating  will  is  accordingly  directly  attributed  to  God,  who, 
"  sending  his  own  Son  in  the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh,  and  for 
sin,  condemned  sin  in  the  flesh,  that  the  ordinance  of  the  law 
might  be  fulfilled  in  us  who  walk  not  after  the  flesh,  but  after 
the  spirit."*  "  When  the  fulness  of  time  was  come,  God  sent 
forth  his  Son,  born  of  a  woman,  born  under  the  law,  that  we 
might  receive  the  adoption  of  sons."!  On  the  other  hand,  the 
spontaneous  movement  of  love  is  referred  also  to  Christ ;  for 
instance,  "  Walk  in  love,  even  as  Christ  also  loved  you,  and 
gave  himself  up  for  us,  an  offering  and  sacrifice  to  God. "J 
"  Let  the  same  mind  be  in  you,  which  was  also  in  Christ 
Jesus  ;  who,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  counted  it  not  a  prize 
to  be  on  an  equality  with  God,  but  emptied  himself,  taking  the 
form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the  likeness  of  men ;  and 
being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled  himself,  becom- 
ing obedient  unto  death,  yea,  the  death  of  the  cross. "§  These 
two  classes  of  passages  find  their  connecting  link  in  the  ex- 
clamation, "  If  God  be  for  us,  who  is  against  us?  He  that 
spared  not  his  own  Son,  but  delivered  him  up  for  us  all,  how 
shall  he  not  also  with  him  freely  give  us  all  things  '?"||  It  is 
a  joint  initiative  for  the  same  tender  mercy  in  two  concurrent 
wills.  The  Son  volunteers  to  take  on  himself  the  death  due, 
by  retributory  law,  to  his  unhappy  race ;  the  Father  consents 
to  let  so  divine  an  act  of  self-sacrificing  love  stand  as  an  expia- 
tion and  be  tantamount  to  an  oblivion  of  the  j^ast,  and  become 
the  occasion  of  inaugurating  the  crowning  future. 

Be  it,  however,  that  in  the  death  on  Calvary  the  guilt  of 
humanity  dies ;  this  is  but  the  negative  half  of  the  needed 
redemption.  An  amnesty  for  Sin  leaves  but  a  blank  result ; 
tears  out  the  blotted  page  behind,  but  secures  no  cleaner 
record  for  the  next.  The  acquitted  are  not  yet  the  righteous 
and  blessed  ;  and  it  remains  to  be  seen  how  the  exchange  of 
places  between  the  Saviour  and  the  saved  is  to  be  completed. 
He  has  borne  our  penalty  ;  how  are  we  to  be  identified  with 
his  righteousness  ?  The  Pauline  answer  is  simple  and  direct : 
the  Cross  expiated  the  past ;  the  Resurrection  consecrates  the 
future  :  in  the  one  is  the  death  of  Sin  ;  in  the  other,  the  birth 

»  Rom.  viii.  3,  4.  ■        f  Gal.  iv.  4,  5.  *  Eph.  v.  2. 

Ji  Phil.  ii.  G-S.  .  II  liom.  viii.  31,  32.  , 

1  1 


4  82  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

of   righteousness.     If,    for   us,   the   former   alone  had  been 
vouchsafed, — if   the    Crucified    had    never    reappeared,    the 
wiping-out  of  penalties  incurred  would  have  been  but  a  futile 
grace,  unknown  to  its   receiver :   the   fleshy   tyranny   would 
have  resumed  its  course,  and  no  fresh  power  have   rushed 
in  to  break  the  bondage.     Instead  of  this  relapse,  there  came 
the  glorious  revelation  of  the  martyred  witness  of  God  as  his 
beloved  Son  in  heaven ;  which  at  once  gave  the  key  to  the 
mysterious  tragedy  of  Golgotha,  and  brought  down  to  earth 
the   power   of  his   life   above.     Did  not  Paul  know  himself 
reborn,  the  very  hour  when  "  it  pleased  God  to  reveal  his 
Son  in  him  ?  "     A  Divine  hand  laid  hold  on  him  and  set  him 
free.     "  Like  as  Christ  was  raised  from  the  dead  through  the 
glory  of.  the  Father,  so  we  also  are  to  walk  in  newness  of  life."* 
' '  If  the  spirit  of  Him  that  raised  up  Jesus  from  the  dead 
dwell  in  you.  He  that  raised  up  Jesus  Christ  from  the  dead 
will  quicken  even  your  mortal  bodies  through  His  spirit  that 
dwelleth  in   you."t     "Henceforth   the   Spirit  itself   beareth 
witness  with  our  spirit,  that  we  are  children  of  God  ;  and  if 
children,  then  heirs  ;  heirs  of  God,  and  joint-heirs  with  Christ ; 
if  so  be  that  we  suffer  with  him,  that  we  may  be  also  glorified 
together."  t     Here,  therefore,  is  the  moment, — in  this  relation 
to  the  heavenly  Christ, — in  v/hich  the  supernatural  initiative, 
after  removing  the   dead  works  of  the  past,  enters   on   its 
creative    function,    of  endowing  the  disciple's    soul   with    a 
positive  righteousness,  and   carries  forward   the  redemption 
from  reconciliation  (KoraXAoYjj)    to  justification   i^iKa'uxiaiq)  : 
and  hence  the  preferential  stress  which  the  apostle,  in  spite  of 
his  glorying  in  the  cross,  lays  on  the  resurrection  of  Christ. 
"It  is  God  that  justifieth  ;  who  is  he  that  condemneth  ?     It 
is  Christ  that  died,  yea  rather  that  was  raised  from  the  dead, 
who  is  at  the  right  hand  of  God,  who  also  maketh  intercession 
for  us."§     Between  the  divine  life  of  Christ  in  heaven   and 
the  inward  experience  of  the  disciples  on  earth  the  apostle 
conceived  an  invisible  communion  constantly  to  exist ;  and  to 
this,  as  to  an  effluence  from  the  very  sanctuary  of  holiness,  be 
referred  all  the  intense  affections  of  devotion,  trust,  and  self- 
surrender,  which    entered   into  the    new  Christian   type    of 

*  Rom.  vi.  4.         t  Ibid.  viii.  11.         t  Ibid.  IG,  17.         §  Ibid.  83,  3i. 


r-hap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  483 

character.  The  Holy  Si^rit,  in  the  .Johannine  sense,  was 
something  sent  from  the  Father  ;  in  the  Panhne  sense,  it  was 
the  personal  spirit  of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  mingling  with 
the  life,  and  quickening  the  si")iritual  energies  of  their  true 
servants;  so  that  what  is  called  the  "mystic  "  language  of 
the  apostle,  of  "living  in  Christ,"*  and  "Christ  hving  in 
him,"  of  "  Christ  being  formed  in  "f  his  disciples,  is  hardly 
even  figurative  to  him,  but  expresses  a  fact  of  experience,  as 
understood  by  himself.  Nor  do  I  know  whether,  in  case  of 
a  profound  and  commanding  love  for  a  venerated  being,  it  is 
less  true  to  deem  him  the  source  of  that  awakening  enthusiasm, 
than  to  take  it  to  one's  self.  The  Positivist  takes  it  for  the 
imagination  of  a  mortal  dead  :  the  apostle,  for  the  living 
communion  of  an  immortal. 

Thus  far,  all  the  agency  in  the  process  of  redemption  has 
been  Divine  and  mediatorial,  carried  out  in  concert  by  God 
and  Christ.  But  now  that  the  crowning  contact  with  the 
persons  to  be  redeemed  is  reached,  there  is  something  to  be 
asked  of  them  :  the  ruin  from  which  they  are  to  be  saved  is 
no  external  lot  whence  they  can  be  snatched,  asleep  or  awake, 
but  the  transformation  of  a  nature  astir  and  quick  in  move- 
ments of  response ;  and  so  the  Spirit  that  visits  them  with  its 
appeal  brings  its  grace  on  one  condition,  viz.,  an  answering 
Faith,  a  loving  acceptance  of  the  new  vision  of  higher  life  for 
what  it  claims  to  be,  and  a  free  self-abandonment  to  it, 
whithersoever  it  may  lead.  Possessed  by  this  pure  trust,  the 
disciple  will  be  spontaneous^  drawn  into  likeness  to  the  object 
of  his  love ;  the  lower  self,  shrouded  in  shame,  will  die  within 
him  ;  and  he  will  be  invested  with  the  righteousness  of  Christ. 
Thus  will  he,  in  Pauline  phrase,  "  put  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,"  or  "  put  on  the  new  man,  which  after  God  hath  been 
created  in  righteousness  and  true  holiness  ;"i  "new"  because 
not  elaborated  by  his  own  will  ;  "  after  God,"  because  inspired 
through  the  Divine  mediation  of  a  heavenly  humanity. 
Advancing  to  an  expression  still  more  characteristic  of  his 
thought  as  transcending  the  ethical  plane  of  religion,  the 
apostle  calls  the  true  Christian's  spiritual  state  "  the  righteous- 

•  Gal.  ii.  20.  t  Ibid.  iv.  It). 

*  Kom.  xiii.  14  ;  Gal.  iii.  27  ;  llph.  iv.  24. 

I   I  2 


484  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

iiess  of  God "'  (BiKaioavvri  rov  ^£oC),*  as  opposed  to  the 
agent's  o^y^  righteousness  (JSm)  ;  regardmg  it  as  nothing 
earned  by  personal  voHtion,  but  as  a  present  supernaturally 
made  by  the  Source  of  all  grace.  It  is  a  participation  in  "the 
spirit  of  Christ,"  in  the  sense,  not  of  a  voluntary  reflection  of 
the  character  of  Jesus,  but  of  a  divinely  wrought  real  change 
of  the  human  nature  into  homogeneity  with  Christ's  heavenly 
essence.  Without  some  beginning  of  this  personal  self- 
identification  with  Christ,  a  man  can  be  "none  of  his "  ;+ 
with  it  he  has  in  his  heart  "  the  earnest  of  the  spirit,  that  he 
is  sealed  of  God,"t  and  the  consciousness  that  already,  as  the 
first-fruits  of  its  '  indwelling  in  him,'  it  refines  and  '  quickens 
even  his  mortal  body,'§  "  while  waiting  for  the  adoption," 
viz.,  the  complete  "  redemption  of  the  body."j| 

The  change,  therefore,  for  the  completion  of  which  the 
faithful  sighed  and  waited,  was  to  be  but  the  culmination  of 
a  new  life, — of  deliverance  from  the  thraldom  of  Sense,  and 
free  movement  in  the  power  of  the  Spirit, — not  wholly  strange 
to  their  present  experience.  By  this  sign  they  knew  it  to  be 
not  too  soon  for  them  to  watch  for  "  the  revelation  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ, "ll  and  the  full  entrance  on  "  the  glorious 
liberty  of  the  children  of  God."**  "  The  time  is  short,"tt  and 
the  powers  of  heaven  are  mustering  to  descend  and  claim  the 
earth  for  the  kingdom  of  God.  We  are  thus  brought  to  the 
eschatology  of  the  apostle,  which  is  in  truth  only  the  last  scene 
in  his  drama  of  redemption.  But  it  has  passed  into  such 
close  connection  with  the  development  in  Christendom  of  be- 
liefs respecting  the  state  of  the  dead  and  the  future  life,  that 
it  will  be  most  conveniently  noticed  in  a  chapter  devoted  to 
that  subject. 

Every  attentive  reader  must  have  observed  the  almost  total 
absence  of  any  personal  Satan  from  the  systematic  doctrine 
of  the  apostle  Paul.  So  few  and  slight  are  the  references  to 
him  in  his  authentic  epistles,  that  no  stress  can  be  laid  on 
them  as  impl3dng  more  than  transient  personification  con- 
venient  for    popular   indication   of    evils   of  which   he    had 

*  Rom.  X.  3,  i.  17,  iii.  22  ;  2  Cor.  v.  21.  t  Rom.  viii.  9. 

t  2  Cor.  i.  22.  §  Rom.  viii.  11.  |1  Ibid.  23. 

•iJ  1  Cor.  i.  7.  '**  Rom.  viii.  21.  ft  1  Cor.  vii.  29. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  485 

occasion  to  speak.  Neither  in  his  Christology,  nor  in  his 
theory  of  redemption,  is  the  Devil  lirought  upon  the  scene  to 
pla_y  any  part,  Tlie  omission  is  the  more  striking,  from  his 
reahstic  treatment  of  Sin  and  Death,  almost  as  if  they  were 
separate  agents  instead  of  human  acts  and  phenomena,  while 
yet  he  stops  short  of  the  impersonation  which  they  seem  to 
need.  This  contrast  with  the  Judaic  Messianic  mythology  of 
the  synoptists  and  the  Apocalypse  was  not  long  permitted  to 
remain  clear :  the  ecclesiastics  of  the  next  century  drama- 
tized the  principles  of  the  Pauline  scheme  by  placing  a  fourth 
actor  on  the  scene,  viz.  the  Devil, — with  alleged  rights  and 
wrongs  in  regard  to  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  JMan  ;  and  the 
doctrine  was  presented  thus.  The  Devil,  as  Prince  of  the 
realm  of  evil  and  Death,  had  acquired,  by  the  transgression 
of  Adam,  and  the  sinfulness  of  his  children,  a  legal  right  to 
have  the  souls  of  men  for  his  own  world  :  this  surrender  into 
his  power  was  their  inevitable  curse,  witnessed  by  the  deciduous 
lives  of  the  generations  as  they  pass.  But  his  right  was  con- 
tingent on  the  sinfulness  of  humanity  ;  and  the  moment  he 
laid  his  hand  upon  the  sinless  Christ,  and  seized  him  for  the 
shades  below,  he  overstepped  his  prerogative,  and  forfeited 
his  right  by  usurpation.  Two  things  therefore  ensued : 
having  clutched  an  immortal  victim,  he  could  not  hold  him 
from  passing  into  heaven,  and  touching  the  earth  by  resur- 
rection on  the  way  ;  and  having  sacrilegiously  robbed  tbo 
treasure-house  of  divine  life,  he  was  condemned  to  make 
reparation,  by  signing  a  release  for  the  whole  brotherhood  of 
Christ.  The  mythology  of  redemption  here  assumed  its  most 
consistent  and  intelligible  shape.  The  subsequent  change 
which  in  the  medieval  period  removed  the  person  of  Satan, 
putting  in  his  place  the  "  Justice  of  God,"  and  resolving  the 
whole  transaction  into  a  juggle  between  conflicting  attributes 
of  the  infinite  Perfection,  did  but  replace  a  childish  forensic 
fiction  by  a  monstrous  moral  enormity.  Yet  this,  alas  !  it  is, 
which  mingles  its  fierce  lights  of  expiation  and  its  massive 
shadows  of  despair  with  the  whole  theology  of  Christendom. 

The  organism  of  doctrine  which  the  Pauline  scheme  of  re- 
demption constructs  around  the  personal  history  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  may  not  be  without  its  perishable  elements  :  but  is 


486  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVL\E  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

shown,  by  its  wide  and  durable  influence,  to  be  the  product 
of  large  speculative  thought  and  deep  spiritual  insight.     So 
far  as  it  occasioned  a  breach  with  the  Jerusalem  apostles,  and 
compelled  a  division  of  the  field  of  missionary  labour,  it  was 
because  it  constituted  a  rebellion  against  all  national  narrow- 
ness and  ethical  legalism,  and  proclaimed  the  Grace  of  God 
on  terms  of  trust  and  love  alone.     The  facts  on  which  the 
apostle  lays  the  utmost  stress, — the  natural  law  as  binding 
on  the  conscience,  the    universality  of    Sin,  the  misery   of 
baffled  aspiration  ;  and  the  positions  which  he  claims  to  make 
good,  that  God  is  not  defeated  by  the  inefficacy  of  his  laws 
and  the  corruption  of  mankind,  but  will  turn  them  to  account 
in  the  issues  of  transcendent  good,  and  that  there  is  an  ideal 
humanity  reserved  in  heaven  and  operative  in  kindred  souls 
on  earth, — are  among  the  most  profoundly  significant  bases 
and  noblest  conclusions  of  religious  life  and  philosophy.     If 
in  the  dialectic  wliich  deals  with  them  we  cannot  always  find 
consistency  or  adequacy  of  reasoning,  this  is  in  great  measure 
due  to  his  starting  from  doubtful  postulates  dictated  to  him 
by  the  authority  of  scripture  or  of  Pharisaic  dogma  ;  or  to 
the  intellectual  self-deceptions  inseparable  from  admitting  the 
play  of  allegory  into  the  serious  business  of  reasoning.     Two 
or  three  examples  of  difficulties  which  I  find  insurmountable 
will  illustrate  what  I  mean  ;  and  the  first  shall  be  one  in 
which  I  may  well  be  wrong;  as  the  Apostle  is  apparently 
deemed  clear  and  coherent  by  so  admirable  a  critic  as  M. 
Menegoz. 

1.  In  his  treatment  of  Sin,  the  apostle  assumes  at  the  out- 
set the  moral  liberty  of  man  in  both  its  factors,  the  knowledge 
of  the  right  and  wrong,  and  the  power  of  practical  choice 
between  them.  Not  only  does  he  address  to  the  Christians 
warnings  and  exhortations  and  reproaches  which  would  be 
unmeaning,  were  there  no  alternative ;  but  of  the  natural 
man  among  the  Gentiles  he  speaks  as  "  inexcusable,"  and  as 
the  object  of  Divine  "wrath  and  indignation,"  if  he  does  not 
live  up  to  what  he  inwardly  knows  to  be  his  duty ;  or  as 
praiseworthy  if  he  does,  and  approved  of  God.  He  recognizes 
gradations  of  guilt,  according  to  the  differing  opportunities  of 
the  Greek  or  Jewish  conscience.  He  argues  throughout  on  the 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF  THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  487 

principle  of  retribution  as  fundamental  in  the  government  of 
God,  and  regards  Death  as  the  penalty  of  Sin.  And  his  whole 
doctrine  of  redemption  is  the  working  out  of  a  thesis  on  the 
Justice  of  God. 

Yet,  side  by  side  with  these  ethical  positions  stands  the 
assumption  of  a  physiological  Necessity,  in  the  fleshly  con- 
stitution of  Man,  incapacitating  him  for  resistance  to  the 
solicitations  of  evil,  and  so  enslaving  him  to  the  power  which 
he  hates,  that  he  is  absolutely  "  so/rZ  under  Sin"  And  the 
very  purpose  to  which  he  puts  this  fearful  representation  is, 
to  prove  the  hopeless  condition  of  man,  unless  rescued,  and 
remade  by  intervention  of  supernatural  agency.  I  am  unable 
to  reconcile  these  two  positions. 

2.  The  apostle,  in  his  statement  that  "  Him  that  knew  no 
sin  God  made  to  be  sin  for  us,  that  we  might  be  made  the 
righteousness  of  God  in  liim,"  means  that,  through  the  Cross 
and  Eesurrection,  there  is  a  change  of  places  between  us 
and  Christ ;  he  taking  on  him  our  penalty,  and  we  becoming 
invested  with  his  righteousness.  Apart  from  all  moral  diffi- 
culties, this  conception  of  substitution,  viewed  merely  on  its 
dogmatic  side,  appears  to  be  illusory.  What  is  the  penalty 
due  to  human  sinners  ?  Death.  And  what  does  that  mean 
for  us?  Hades  for  ever :  whereas  the  death  of  Christ  meant 
for  him  Hades  for  a  day  and  a  lialf.  On  the  other  hand,  Iris 
rifiJiteoHsness  was  immaculate  conformity  to  the  Divine  "Will 
through  his  entire  existence  ;  whereas  what  is  imparted  to  his 
disciple  is  (after  expiation  of  the  guilty  past)  a  hirth  into  the 
j)ossihilit]i  of  a  stainless  future.  In  order  to  pay  our  penalty, 
he  ought  not  to  have  risen  from  the  dead.  In  order  to  have 
his  righteousness,  we  ought  to  be  brought  up  to  the  present 
through  as  pure  a  past.  It  is  but  a  fictitious  transference, 
where  the  substitute  arrives  infinitely  in  defect  or  in  excess  of 
that  which  it  replaces. 

3.  The  apostle's  Theodicy  is  made  up,  in  regard  to  the  past 
history  of  the  world,  of  two  propositions,  which  greatly  em- 
barrass one  another,  viz.  (1.)  that  all  is  divinely  foreordained  : 
(2.)  that  all  is  merely  failure.  This  appears  at  first  siglit  a 
union  of  Providence  and  pessimism,  without  the  possibility  of 
escape  by  throwing  the  blame  on  the  abused  freedom  of  the 


488  SEVERANCE  OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

human  -svill-  The  Creator,  m  maldng  man  of  flesh,  doomed 
him  to  sin  and  death ;  and  in  giving  the  Law  from  Sinai, 
occasioned  "all  manner  of  coveting,"  and  by  enjoining  on 
man  an  impossible  condition  of  life,  "  slew  "  him.  Boldly 
facing  the  consequences  of  this  view,  the  apostle,  as  we  have 
seen,  declares  that  the  Law  was  instituted  for  the  express 
purpose  of  multiplying  transgressions,  attended  by  a  full  con- 
sciousness that  "  sin  was  exceeding  sinful;"  and  then  perhaps 
the  offenders,  reduced  to  the  last  despair,  would  renounce  their 
self-dependence  and  fling  themselves  on  the  grace  of  God, 
offering  to  accept  them  for  their  faith  instead  of  for  their 
works.  Since  the  apostle  himself  describes  the  "  faithful 
Abraham"  as  already  so  accepted,  one  does  not  see  the  need 
of  waiting  till  the  world's  end  for  turning  the  example  into  the 
rule.  Meanwhile,  the  generations  of  men  are  "  subjected  to 
vanity,"  entrapped  in  miserable  self-deception,  "  not  of  their 
own  will,  but  by  reason  of  him  who  hath  subjected  the  same 
in  hope," — of  what?  "Of  being  delivered  from"  their 
"  bondage  of  corruption  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the 
children  of  God."  It  is  difficult  to  give  a  sacred  aspect  to 
this  mere  doing  and  undoing.  It  may  be  fitting  work  for  a 
holy  day,  "  if  an  ox  or  an  ass  should  have  fallen  into  a  pit,  to 
draw  it  out  again  ;"  but  not,  surely,  to  pitch  it  in,  in  order  to 
draw  it  out.  And  how  can  we  deny  that  to  constitute  a  race, 
to  institute  a  law,  to  order  and  evolve  a  world's  history,  with 
provisions  for  disappointing  the  highest  ends  of  their  nature 
and  aspirations,  is  to  create  and  govern  on  false  pretences, 
and  to  expend  millenniums  of  cruel  illusion,  as  a  j)relude  to 
the  brief  surprise  which  shall  take  away  the  veil  from  the  face 
of  one  generation,  and  save  a  remnant  at  last  ? 

These  and  other  minor  examples  of  questionable  speculative 
construction  arise,  however,  in  the  attempt,  inevitable  for  the 
Christian  missionary,  to  adjust  the  original  matter  of  his 
divine  message  to  the  preconceptions  occupying  his  hearers' 
minds  from  their  antecedent  bases  of  belief;  and  it  is  no 
wonder  that  in  course  of  time  some  rents  have  appeared  from 
sewing  the  new  piece  into  the  old  garment. 

But  quit  the  apostle's  dialectic  with  Jew  and  Greek,  and 
seize  the  central  characteristic  of  his  thought  and  life  :  look 


Chap.  1 1 1.  J       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  489 

at  it  alone,  and  find  its  meaning  and  contents,  and  you  will 
leave  it  to  Jew  and  Greek  to  quarrel  with  him  over  his  logical 
flaws.  The  one  thing  which  he  knew,  and  on  M-hich  he  took 
his  stand,  was  the  "justification  through  faith:"  that  is, 
harmony  with  God  through  trust  and  love  towards  him  and 
all  that  is  like  him  :  for  nothing  less  than  this  does  tlie  Fait]i 
of  Paul  imply.  As  opposed  to  "  iroyhs''  of  the  will,  it  is 
Tightness  of  heart,  the  true  direction  of  the  affections  towards 
the  objects,  and  in  the  relative  strength,  of  which  God  approves. 
Not  that  it  dispenses  with  the  practical  activities  of  duty  ; 
but,  seeing  that  these  may  be  the  products  of  possibly  mis- 
taken rules,  or  the  monotonous  beat  of  habits  in  their  mill, 
it  shifts  the  accent  of  spiritual  value  from  the  outward  to  the 
inward  side  of  the  moral  life,  and  insists  that,  to  be  at  one 
with  the  Searcher  of  hearts,  the  secret  spring  of  what  we  will 
or  aspire  to  do  must  be  that  which  He  loves  to  see.  The 
apostle's  formula  unconsciously  alights  upon  the  very  essence 
of  the  teaching,  which  he  never  heard,  upon  the  Mount  and  in 
the  villages  of  Galilee,  but  which  throughout,  from  the  beati- 
tudes to  Simon's  Supper  in  Bethany,  never  ceased  to  strip 
away  the  external  semblances  of  sanctity,  and  startled  self- 
deceivers  and  hypocrites  alike,  by  laying  bare  the  inwardness 
and  directness  of  every  soul's  relation  to  God.  And  is  it  not 
true  that  the  power  of  moral  achievement,  which  is  missed 
by  the  casuistical  intellect,  flows  into  self-forgetful  affection 
directed  upon  right  objects?  that  under  the  enthusiasm  of 
compassion,  of  love,  of  reverence,  we  no  longer  feel  our  own 
weight,  or  reckon  with  our  toil,  but  pass  at  a  liound  over 
spaces  of  difficulty  which  the  uninspired  will  can  never  face? 
And  if  the  enthusiasm  does  not  stop  short  of  the  crown  of  all 
its  power, — the  filial  union  with  the  "  Father  who  seetli  in 
secret," — even  bailled  zeal  and  failing  hopes  will  be  guarded 
from  despair  l)y  the  one  love  that  cannot  be  disappointed  and 
can  never  die  ;  we  shall  cast  our  own  short-comings  upon  the 
infinite  Pity  of  God,  and  in  the  simplest  trust  find  the  most 
perfect  rest. 


490  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

§  3.  Tlie  Work  of  the  Incarnate  Logos. 

The  impulse  which  the  rehgion  of  Jesus  gave  to  the  world 
may  be  measured  by  the  widening  circles  of  theory  thrown  out 
to  embrace  and  explain  it.  As  each  was  proved  inadequate  in 
turn,  it  was  replaced  by  a  more  comprehensive,  which  left  the 
eld  limits  to  fall  away,  and  stretched  itself  to  the  compass  of 
a  larger  phenomenon.  No  amount  of  failure  in  the  doctrinal 
schemes  of  its  missionaries,  or  of  disappointment  in  their 
prophecies,  arrested  its  progress  or  interfered  with  its  spiritual 
power.  It  was  preached  from  Jerusalem  as  the  tidings  of 
Messiah's  nomination  and  the  approach  and  near  fulfilment 
of  Jewish  hopes :  Messiah  came  not  back  from  heaven,  and 
those  who  had  promised  his  arrival  died  without  the  sight : 
yet  his  name  was  still  the  symbol  of  a  spreading  union  which 
baffled  expectations  could  not  dissolve.  It  was  proclaimed  as 
the  harbinger  of  a  theocratic  millennium,  with  the  temple  for 
its  citadel,  and  the  overthrow  of  Eome  for  its  inaugural 
triumph  ;  *  the  temple  was  levelled  to  the  ground,  the  imperial 
eagles  sought  their  prey  over  wider  fields,  and  still  no  trumpet 
sounded,  no  phials  were  poured  out,  no  seal  was  broken  :  yet 
the  seven  churches  which  had  watched  in  vain,  far  from  break- 
ing up  in  despair,  rather  became  seventy  times  seven,  and  at 
every  persecution  were  enriched  by  the  tombs  of  new  martyrs. 
From  Tarsus,  the  religion  was  announced,  regardless  of 
national  limits,  as  a  reconstitution  of  humanity  itself,  a  super- 
natural infusion  of  a  heavenly  element,  a  transference  of  power 
from  the  flesh  to  the  spirit,  assimilating  the  true  disciple  to 
higher  natures,  and  preparing  him  for  the  society  of  the 
descending  Son  of  God  :  the  men  and  women  in  the  Christian 
assemblies  did  not  realize  this  ideal :  they  were  not  visibly  of 
other  type  than  that  which  prevailed  around  them  ;  with  in- 
firmities of  body  and  soul  against  which  the  pity  and  the 
discipline  of  the  Church  had  to  provide  ;  and  no  sign  appeared 
of  such  a  reciprocation  of  life  between  earth  and  heaven  as 
betokened  a  new  creation  :  yet,  though  Paul  was  gone,  anct 
his  word  was  not  fulfilled,  the  Gentile  element  continued  to 

*  Eev.  xviii.  16-20,  xi.  1-3.     CI.  xx.  G,  xxi.  22. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  491 

pour  in,  and  felt  a  growing  persuasion  in  liis  voice  a  genera- 
tion after  it  had  ceased.  And  now  the  fourth  evangehst, 
writing,  it  is  probable,  not  long  before  the  middle  of  the  second 
century,  looks  round  upon  a  scene  so  large,  and  animated  by 
religious  characteristics  so  deeply  marked,  that  no  prior  doc- 
trine covers  the  new  life  which  he  beholds :  no  Jewish  influ- 
ence, though  in  its  most  consummate  form,  no  agency  simply 
human,  however  pure  and  strong,  is  adequate  to  the  spiritual 
revolution :  the  partition  has  given  way  between  man  and 
God :  the  Infinite  no  longer  dwells  apart  and  leaves  the  world 
alone,  but  stoops  to  finite  spirits,  and  makes  one  communion 
there  and  here.  For  the  new  and  higher  agency  which  was  at 
work  upon  the  private  heart  and  on  society,  first  the  Hebrew 
prophet  was  enough  :  then,  as  its  significance  expanded,  it 
needed  a  divine  man  :  and  at  the  end  of  a  century,  it  had 
assumed  a  magnitude  and  depth  which  seemed  due  to  nothing 
short  of  an  incarnation  of  God,  and  a  descent  upon  the  earth 
of  a  Divine  life.  It  is  easy  to  dismiss  this  progression  of 
doctrine  with  the  contemptuous  remark,  that,  as  time  passed 
on  and  the  true  history  passed  out  of  sight,  the  Christian 
teachers  advanced  their  pretensions  to  a  bolder  distance,  and 
bid  higher  for  the  veneration  of  mankind.  But  they  would 
have  defeated  their  own  zeal,  had  they  made  any  monstrous 
over-provision  for  the  facts  which  they  professed  to  explain  : 
their  grand  causes,  if  applied  to  insignificant  results,  would 
simply  have  provoked  the  rebuke,  "  Talk  no  more  so  exceeding 
proudly."  There  must  have  been  some  sort  of  proportion 
between  the  scale  and  character  of  the  religion,  and  the  account 
which,  from  time  to  time,  they  rendered  of  it.  And  as  the 
latest  theology  of  the  New  Testament  is  also  the  highest,  it  is 
a  fair  inference  that  Christianity,  whatever  doubtful  elements 
it  had  taken  up,  had  become  clearer  and  deeper  as  it  flowed, 
and  swept  over  human  affections  with  a  purifying  and  fertil- 
izing power,  transcending  the  limits  of  prior  experience  and 
the  resources  of  existing  theory.  We  are  apt  to  wonder  how 
it  can  be  that  a  higher  worship  can  apparently  emerge  from 
conditions  of  erroneous  thought,  and  Christianity  as  a  whole 
])e  divine,  though  every  successive  phase  of  it  be  human.  And 
the  perplexity  will  never  cease  till  we  discover  that  all  religion 


492 


SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS,    r Book  IV. 


is  deeper  than  any  theology,  and  we  may  reverence  aright 
whilst  we  think  amiss.  The  spirit  of  God  frequents  the  regions 
of  the  soul  below  the  strata  of  intellect  and  speech ;  and  there 
nourishes,  in  darkness  and  in  silence,  an  inner  love  and  trust, 
which,  being  the  very  visual  organ  through  which  the  spirit 
sees,  cannot  look  at  itself  to  tell  what  it  is  like.  Not  only  is 
it  possible  for  men  to  be  possessed  by  a  religion  quite  other 
than  their  theology,  and  even,  when  the  deeps  of  their  nature 
are  broken  up  by  sorrow,  to  find  there  the  very  faith  which 
they  had  disputed  ;  but  the  greater  and  more  original  the  in- 
spiration is,  the  more  certainly  inadequate  will  be  the  forms 
of  conception  and  language  through  which  it  struggles  towards 
expression.  The  more  we  appreciate  Christianity  as  the 
sublimest  of  God's  revelations  to  the  human  conscience,  the 
less  shall  we  be  satisfied  with  any  of  the  schemes  of  theology, 
in  or  out  of  Scripture,  which  undertake  to  define  what  it  is. 

The  work  of  Christ,  as  represented  in  the  fourth  Gospel, 
differs,  both  in  measure  and  in  kind,  from  the  salvation  con- 
templated by  either  the  Twelve  or  Paul.  The  evangelist's  pic- 
ture of  the  habitable  world  and  of  the  ills  in  it  which  were 
accessible  to  redress,  was  by  no  means  identical  with  theirs. 
To  them,  the  universe  was  a  three-chambered  structure,  con- 
sisting of  the  Heaven  where  angels  and  blessed  spirits  dwelt 
with  the  Eternal  God :  of  the  Earth,  the  abode  of  Adam's 
race,  with  the  creatures  submitted  to  their  sway  :  and  of  the 
Underworld,  where  Satan  had  his  home,  and  held  the  souls  of 
the  dead  in  prison,  or  sent  them  forth  as  demons  on  his 
errands  of  mischief  among  mankind.  However  variously 
imaged  might  be  this  kingdom  of  the  shades,  it  was  plainly 
regarded  as  not  cut  off  from  commufiication  with  the  fields 
beneath  the  sun ;  for  the  rich  man  in  the  parable  would  fain 
send  his  five  brethren  a  message  thence  by  Lazarus,  lest  they 
also  suffer  his  "  evil  things :  "  *  and  the  early  Christians 
believed  that  the  crucified,  on  being  "quickened  in  the  Spirit," 
"  went  and  preached  to  the  spirits  in  prison  "  ere  he  ascended 
into  Heaven.!  The  fourth  evangelist  knows  nothing  of  such 
a  Hades,   as   the  realm  of  the  departed  in  whose  waiting- 

*  Luke  xvi.  27-29. 

t  1  Peter  iii.  19.    See  Apostles'  creed,  "  He  clcocended  into  Holl."    (Hades.) 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES    OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  493 

halls  the  j)risoners  can  be  converted,  or  whence  they  can 
1)6  rescued.  Death,  with  this  evangelist,  is  no  deeper  than 
iJie  f/rave ;  where  Lazarus  ^' slept ,''  where  Jesus  himself  lay, 
w^hence  all  who  hear  the  voice  of  the  Life-giver  will  simply 
come  forth,  without  any  complication  with  an  arrival  of  their 
souls  from  the  chambers  below.  Connected  probably  with 
this  shutting  up  of  the  underworld  is  the  total  absence  of  de- 
moniacal possession  from  this  gospel ;  for  the  evil  spirits  were 
subjects  of  the  Satanic  realm,  and  would  naturally  pass  away 
when  their  proper  home  was  gone,  and  there  was  no  place 
whence  they  could  make  their  incursions  on  the  bodies  and  the 
souts  of  men.  Not  that  Satan  himself  was  thus  got  rid  of;  he 
lost  a  subterranean  only  to  gain  an  hypsethral  realm.  Of  the 
two  regions  now  composing  the  simplitied  universe,  the  Heaven 
above  unchangeably  remained  tlie  abode  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son  and  all  immortals  ;  but  the  earth  below,  the  dwelling- 
place  of  men,  fell,  in  spite  of  prophetic  calls  and  transient 
visits  of  Divine  light,  under  the  dominion  of  "  the  Power  of 
darkness,"  "  the  Prince  of  this  world."  How  it  could  be  that 
a  God-created  world,  constituted  by  the  eternal  Word,  "  with- 
out whom  there  was  nothing  made  that  had  been  made," 
should  have  lapsed  into  a  Devil's  territory,  the  evangelist  does 
not  explain  ;  any  more  than  Paul  explains  the  universality  of 
sin  under  the  rule  of  omnipotent  Piighteousness ;  or  than 
Marcion  explains  the  operations  of  a  "malignant"  Demiurge, 
author  of  Nature  and  giver  of  the  Jewish  law,  under  the 
supremacy  of  "  the  Good  God,"  who  revealed  himself  in 
Jesus  Christ.  All  these  are  but  instances  of  the  inevitable  but 
imperfect  dualism  forced  upon  human  thought  Ijy  the  contrasts 
of  experience.  A  new  religion  gives  birth  to  an  entrancing 
affection,  and,  going  apart  with  its  own  enthusiasm,  sees  all 
else  at  variance  with  it,  and  needing  either  conversion  or  re- 
jection. It  cannot  live  without  its  outcasts  :  the  Israelite  has 
his  Gentiles:  the  apostle  Paul  his  "false  brethren,"  that 
"  make  the  cross  of  Christ  of  none  effect,"  through  their  "dead 
works  :"  and  now  the  mysterious  evangelist  who  ihids  in  union 
with  Christ  the  whole  spiritual  distance  annihilated  between 
the  life  of  man  and  God,  looks  forth  upon  a  world  made  up  of 
dissolute  Paganism   and  embittered  Judaism  as  in  the  mass 


494  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

delivered  over  to  the  power  of  evil.  Between  the  low  passions 
that  reift-n  there,  of  greed  and  lust,  of  ambition  and  envy,  and 
the  aspirations  and  trust,  the  humility  and  love  that  breathe 
through  the  prayers  and  sweeten  the  inner  life  of  a  true  Chris- 
tian community,  the  contrast  presents  itself  to  him  as  little 
less  than  infinite  ;  so  that  only  now  does  the  genuine  history 
of  humanity  open,  with  the  planting  of  a  sacred  colony  in  the 
midst  of  the  dark  continent  of  earthly  sin  and  shame.  Out  of 
such  experience  he  assumes  as  fact  which  needs  no  theory  that 
worldly  things  are  ungodly,  that  while  Heaven  is  the  abode  of 
all  perfection,  whatever  is  at  variance  with  the  Divine  nature, 
— falsehood,  hatred,  license,  sloth  and  death, — the  vile  equip- 
ment of  "  the  Prince  of  this  world," — are  in  the  ascendant 
here  below.  It  is  a  scene  so  hopelessly  alien  to  the  whole 
sphere  of  Christ's  mission,  that  he  disowns  it  as  foreign  to 
him,  and  is  silent  at  its  approach :  "  I  will  no  more  speak 
much  with  you  ;  for  the  Prince  of  this  world  cometh,  and  hath 
nothing  in  me  :  "  *  "I  pray  not  for  the  world,  but  for  them 
whom  Thou  hast  given  me,  for  they  are  thine."  f 

If  the  world  be  thus  given  over  to  the  dominion  of  a  super- 
natural Principle  of  evil,  it  would  seem  that  the  mere  human 
nature  must  be  overmatched,  and  an  irresistible  necessity  of 
sin  be  laid  upon  it ;  and  we  should  be  brought,  only  by 
another  path,  to  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  the  utter  helplessness 
of  man  for  all  righteousness,  and  the  absolute  need,  if  he  is  to 
be  snatched  from  ruin,  of  investing  him  with  an  extraneous 
righteousness.  And  language  is  used  in  the  Gospel  which, 
taken  by  itself,  would  undeniably  demand  such  an  interpreta- 
tion. When  it  is  said  of  his  hearers  at  Jerusalem,  "  For  this 
cause  they  could  not  believe,"  because  Isaiah  had  announced  the 
supernatural  blinding  of  their  eyes  and  hardening  of  their 
hearts:!  when  Jesus  himself  utters  the  rei:)roach,  "Why 
do  you  not  apprehend  what  I  say  ?  because  you  cannot  hear 
my  word  "  (i.e.,  it  does  not  speak  to  such  as  you),  for  it  is 
'  what  I  have  heard  of  God,'  and  "  you  are  not  of  God,  but  of 
your  father  the  Devil :"  §  and  when  he  repeats  the  expres- 
sion, "Ye  believe  not,  because  ye   are  not  of  my  sheep:  "|| 

*  John  xiv.  30.  f  Ibid.  xvii.  9.  C  xii.  33. 

5  viii.  43,  47,  44.  jl  x.  26. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  493 

men  are  described  as  victims  of  a  fatality  which  mingles  a  tone 
of  cruelty  ^Yith  these  upbraidings.  So  little  conscious,  how- 
ever, is  the  evangelist  of  abolishing  culpability  by  these  repre- 
sentations, that  he  means  to  intensify  it ;  like  others  who  play 
fast  and  loose  with  diabolic  powers,  he  invokes  them  to  make 
guilt  portentous,  while  they  play  him  false  by  reducing  it  to 
nought.  He  himself,  indeed,  lays  down  elsewhere  the  prin- 
ciple that  the  darkness  of  invincible  ignorance  respecting  true 
religion  involves  no  guilt ;  and  he  justifies  his  condemnation  of 
his  hearers  on  the  ground  that  they  had  both  competency  and 
opportunity  of  appreciating  the  Divine  message  with  which  he 
was  charged  :  "  If  I  had  not  come  and  spoken  to  them,  they 
had  not  had  sin  ;  but  now  they  have  no  excuse  for  their  sin  :"* 
"  If  ye  were  blind,  ye  would  have  no  sin  ;  but  now  ye  say, 
We  see;  therefore  3'our  sin  remaineth."t  When  he  openly 
condemns  their  rejection  of  him,  it  is  because  he  sees  all  its 
hollowness  and  the  evil-mindedness  of  its  source  :  "  If  I  say 
truth,  why  do  ye  not  believe  me?"  it  is  "  Z^t'ca/fsc  I  say  the 
truth  that  ye  believe  me  not:"]:  "ye  both  know  me,  and 
whence  I  am  ;  and  I  am  not  come  of  myself,  but  he  that  sent 
me  is  true,  whom  ye  know  not."  §  They  know  not  what 
spirit  they  are  of :  their  unbelief  is  wilful  estrangement  from 
unwelcome  truth,  a  preference  for  flattering  lies,  an  evasion  of 
high  demands  and  holy  obligations,  a  setting  up  of  self  and  flesh 
against  God,  a  slavery  of  habit  to  sin,  till  the  spiritual  night 
which  hides  their  shame  from  themselves  is  more  acceptable 
than  the  day  which  shows  it.  This  picture  is  drawn,  not  of 
Heathendom  alone,  but  in  even  stronger  lines  of  Judaism  too  : 
"  Ye  are  of  3'our  father,  the  Devil,  and  the  lusts  of  your 
father  it  is  your  will  to  do."  No  truth,  no  faith,  no  love, 
no  purity  finds  shelter  in  a  world  which  has  given  itself  up 
to  the  Prince  of  evil  and  father  of  lies.  If  there  is  an  intensity 
of  moral  passion  in  the  evangelist's  appreciation  of  the  state 
of  mankind,  which  goes  beyond  even  the  apostle  Paul's  fearful 
description  in  the  opening  chapter  of  his  Epistle  to  the 
Piomans,  it  is  because  he  sees  in  the  corruption  more  of 
guilt  and  less  of  incapacity :  and  it  is,  perhaps,  but  another 
aspect  of  the  same  characteristic  that  Satan  appears  in  this 

♦  Jolm  XV.  22.  t  ix-  41.  J  viii.  4G,  45.  §  vii.  £S. 


496  SEVERANCE  OF  UN Dl VIAE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

gospel  stripped  of  every  attribute  of  mere  physical  power,  as 
tormentor  of  the  bodies  of  men,  and  keeper  of  the  realms  of 
death ;  deprived,  moreover,  of  any  retinue  of  dependent  spirits 
to  do  his  errands,  and  with  the  space  cleared  all  around  that 
he  may  stand  alone  and  centred  in  himself,  without  admixture  ; 
all  that  is  odious  in  itself,  ruinous  to  man,  and  opposite  to 
God. 

Into  this  alienated  world  descends  the  Divine  creative 
Logos  to  recover  it  from  the  usurping  ill.  He  assumes  the 
human  personality ;  presents  himself  to  the  nation  whose 
prophets  have  foreseen  his  day  ;  bears  witness,  by  a  presence 
and  by  works  truly  unique,  to  his  real  character ;  ascends 
the  cross ;  emerges  from  the  sepulchre ;  returns  to  heaven  ; 
but  never  again  dissolves  the  spiritual  communion  into  which 
he  has  introduced  this  sphere.  If  we  ask,  wdierein  consists 
the  redeeming  efficacy  of  this  visit,  the  answer  takes  us  at 
once  to  the  essential  and  pervading  idea  of  this  gospel.  It  is 
simply  as  the  hiijht  of  the  World,  the  source  of  truth,  the 
focus  whence  all  purity  and  beauty  radiate,  the  spring  of 
healing,  life  and  Jove,  that  he  operates  on  the  darkness  around, 
draws  to  him  the  spirits  that  are  pining  for  a  brightness  they 
cannot  reach,  and  repels  from  him  those  who  are  contented 
with  their  blindness.  Not  only  does  the  evangelist  emphasize 
this  transforming  personal  influence,  "To  as  many  as 
received  him  he  gave  power  to  become  sons  of  God;"  "of 
his  fulness  we  have  all  received,  and  grace  for  grace ;  "*  but 
he  makes  it  a  theme  in  the  discourses  of  Christ  himself ; 
"  as  long  as  I  am  in  the  world,  I  am  the  light  of  the  world," 
"  I  am  the  light  of  the  world  :  he  tliat  followeth  me  shall  not 
walk  in  darkness,  but  have  the  light  of  life;  "t  "I  am  the 
living  bread  ^Yhich  came  down  out  of  heaven  :  if  any  one  eat 
of  this  bread,  he  shall  live  for  ever."^  And  it  is  especially  as 
the  witness  of  divine  Truth,  fresh  from  heaven,  that  he  carries 
this  illuminating  power :  "for  this  end  am  I  come  into  the 
world,  that  I  should  bear  witness  unto  the  truth :  "§  "  ye 
seek  to  kill  me,  a  man  that  hath  told  you  the  truth,  which  I 
heard  from  God."|l     It  is  to  the  mere  power  of  his  presence, 

*  John  i.  12,  IG.  f  ix-  5,  viii.  VI.  +  vi.  51. 

§  xviii.  37.  li  viii.  40. 


ClKip.  IIL]       THEORIES    OF    THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  497 

— the  presence  of  the  infinitely  Pure, — that  all  the  efficacy  is 
assigned ;  and  just   as   the   rich  and  healthful   elements  of 
nature  come  at  his  call,  the  wine  to  the  feast,  vision   to  the 
hlind,  and  life  to  the  dead,   so  does  the  secret   good  of  every 
soul  spring  forth  to  meet  him,   and  the  conscious  ill   retire 
abashed.     Nathaniel  finds  that  his  guileless  piety  is  known  : 
the  woman  at  the  well,  that  her  compunctions  speak  too  true  : 
Nicodemus,  that  he  cannot  secretly  bargain  with  the  diviner 
life,  but  must  be  born  into  it,   and  be  and  do  what  it  may 
bring.     The  Good  Shepherd  has  but  to  appear  and  call,  and 
his  sheep  know  his  voice  and  gather  together  and  follow  him. 
A  native  sympathy  of  like  with  like,  of  aspiring  and  depen- 
dent goodness  with  the  perfect  and  absolute,  sifts  the  mixed 
multitude  of  men,  and  brings  around  him  the  true  sons  of 
God.     There  is  an  effluence  of  sanctity  from  his  person,  of 
truth  from  his  words,  of  cleansing  conviction  from  his  look, 
which  reaches  every  susceptible  conscience,  and  puts  every  guilty 
thought  to  flight.     The  officers  sent  for  his  arrest  dare  not  lay 
hands, on  him,  and  come  back  with  the  report,  "Never  man 
spake  like  this  man."*     The  crafty  accusers  who  dragged  the 
adulteress  before  him  to  ensnare  him  in  his  speech  v/ere  glad 
to  shrink  awav  from  his  searching  word  and  silent  look,  f     The 
chief  priest's  servants  hurried  by  Judas  through  the  garden  to 
seize  him,  are  met  by  his  advance,   and   no  sooner  see  his 
figure  in  the  flash  of  their  lanterns  and  hear  his  "  I  am  he," 
than  they  "recoil  and  fall  upon  the  ground."!     In  virtue  of 
this  awe-inspiring  power  of  sanctity  which  the  wicked  hate  and 
shun,  and  good  hearts  love  and  seek,  his  very  j^i'esence  begins 
already   the  judgment    of  this    world,    and    marks  off  by  its 
eft'ect  the  children  of  darkness  from  the  children  of  light ;  the 
former  turning  from  him  in  natural  antipathy  and  going  their 
own  way  into  deeper  blindness  and  more  hopeless  death ;  the 
latter  drawn  to  him   l)v  the  natural  affinitv  through  which 
"  he  that  doeth  the  truth  conieth  "   to  the  absolutely  true.§ 
In  tliis  sense  it  is  that  Jesus  is  made  to  say,  "For  judgment 
came  I   into   this  world,  that  they  which  see  not  may  see, 
and  they  which  see  may  be  made  blind  "  :  ^   and   "  the  Father 

*  John  vii.  45,  4G.  f  viii.  1-11.  X  xviii.  G. 

§  iii.  21.  II  ix.  39. 

K   K 


498  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

judgeth  no  man,  but  hatli  committed   all  judgment    to  the 
Son."*     The   opposite  statements,  "  I  judge  no  man,"t  and 
"  if  any  man  hear  my  sayings  and  keep  them  not,  I  judge 
him  not ;  for  I  came  not  to  judge  the  world,  hut  to  save  the 
world,"!  are  no  contradiction  of  the  former,  for  they  only  dis- 
claim any  formal  judicial  act  and  verdict  on  the  part  of  Christ, 
and  affirm  that  each  hearer,  in  taking  his  own  line,  of  belief 
or  aversion,  shows  what  he  is  and  pronounces  sentence  on 
himself.     The  presence  of  the  incarnate  Word  acts  as  a  touch- 
stone  on  mankind.     Everything  centres  in  that  one  divine 
figure  ;  whose  absence  in  the  "  bosom  of  the  Father  "  had  left 
men  under  spiritual  eclipse ;  whose  presence  in  our  humanity 
brought  the  sunshine  of  an  everlasting  day.     Those  in  whom 
he    wakes   up  the  "power    to  become  sons  of  God  "have 
more  than  the  promise,  have  already  the  foretaste  and  begin- 
ning  of  eternal   life ;  the  springs  of  which  are  consciously 
renewed  every  time   the    broken  bread   and  the  communion 
cup   freshen    in    their   hearts   the    "grace    and    truth"    he 
brought  from  heaven.     If  the  statement  "  I  give  unto  them 
eternal  life  "  is  often  and  unconditionally  repeated    in  this 
gospel,  it  is  because,  in  the  evangelist's  view,  the  work  of 
Christ  was  one  not  of   expiation  or  redemption,   not  of  re- 
pentance and  forgiveness,  but  of  direct  saiictijication  ,•  and  its 
efficacy  was  wholly  in  the  manifestation,  by  the  Son  of  God, 
of  human  and   Divine    perfection,    harmonizing   earth   and 
heaven.     There  is  no  obstacle  to  the  immediate  extension  of 
the  holiness  of  Christ,  as  by  the  reflection  of  soul  upon  soul, 
to   his  disciples.     "  Sanctify  them    in  the   truth  ;  thy  word 
is  truth.      As  thou  didst  send  me  into  the  world,   even  so 
sent  I  them  into  the  world ;  and   for  their  sakes  I  sanctify 
myself,  that  they  themselves  also  maybe  sanctified  in  truth. "§ 
Two  or  three  expressions  in  which  the  author  seems  to  swerve 
from  this  characteristic  of  his  theology  will  be  noticed  here- 
after.   It  is  sufficient  for  the  present  to  state  the  pervading  idea 
of  his  gospel :  in  conformity  with  which,  the  supreme  interest 
of  the  drama,  the  crisis  of  its  saving  action,  is  thrown  upon 
the  ministry  and  human  life  of  Christ ;  and  is  thus  in  strong 
contrast  with  the  Pauline  theology,   in  which  the  biography 

*  John  V.  22.  t  viii.  15.  t  >^ii-  4:7.  §  xvii.  17-19. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  499 

of  Jesus  is  wholly  subordinate,  and  the  real  Divine  economy 
opens  with  Calvary,  and  concentrates  all  its  light  upon  the  cross. 
This  does  not  mean  that,  in  the  fourth  gospel,  the  death  of 
Christ  is  left  without  distinct  importance  for  his  work.  But 
the  stress  laid  upon  it  does  not  detach  it  from  his  historic 
life,  and  charge  it  with  new  and  magical  functions  of  expia- 
tion ;  but  treats  it  as  homogeneous  in  effect  with  that  life, 
and  continuing  its  presence  and  its  power  in  transcendental 
form  and  on  a  vaster  scale.  The  incarnation  did  not  begin 
that  Divine  agency,  and  the  crucifixion  does  not  close  it,  or 
anyhow  change  it  except  in  the  deep  and  intense  hold  it 
must  thenceforth  have  on  the  human  consciousness.  The 
sacred  personality  had  but  passed  from  earth  to  heaven,  and 
would  breathe  thence  the  same  truth  and  love  as  at  the  well 
of  Sychar  and  the  home  at  Bethany.  If  he  gave  himself  for 
us  to  take  our  life,  he  gave  himself  for  us  to  lay  it  down  :  both 
alike  were  pure  self-abnegation,  a  patient  treading  of  the  path 
of  i^ain,  to  reveal  the  Infinite  Father  to  his  blind  children  on 
earth.  The  fruit  of  that  knowledge  is  nothing  less  than 
eternal  life.  What  wonder  then  that  the  evangelist  thinks 
of  Jesus  as  saying  "  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this, 
that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends."*  "  The  son  of 
man  must  be  lifted  up,  that  whosoever  believeth  may  in  him 
have  eternal  life."!  That  his  suffering  death,  as  part  of  his 
whole  assumption  of  humanity,  was  a  disinterested  interposi- 
tion on  behalf  of  "  his  friends,"  of  "  those  who  believed  in 
him  "  and  "  kept  his  sayings,"  and  of  "  those  also  who  should 
believe  on  him  through  their  word," I  that  it  largely  developed 
their  "  power  to  become  sons  of  God,"§  and  "  took  away  their 
sins  "  by  sanctifying  their  souls,  is  perfectl}^  intelligible,  and 
is  consistently  affirmed  by  the  evangelist.  This  only  recites 
in  new  words  the  selective  power  of  Christ's  presence  of 
attracting  all  pure  minds  to  him,  and  so  holding  them  that  of 
all  '  those  whom  God  gave  him  out  of  the  world ji  not  one 
was  lost  save  the  son  of  perdition. 'II  But  the  correlative  of 
such  "  saving  "  of  the  elect  is  the  punisliing  of  tlie  rest  whom 
God  had  ??oi  given,  i.e.,    of  "the   worhV  out   of  which  they 


•  John  XV.  13. 

t  iii.  14,  15. 

:::  xvii.  20. 

§  i-  12. 

II  xvii.  G. 

^  xvii.  12. 
i:  K  2 

500  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVE\E  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

were  drawn.  It  surprises  us  therefore  to  hear  the  same  writer 
declare  that  "  God  sent  not  his  Son  into  the  world  to  judge 
the  world,  but  that  the  world  should  he  saved  through  him  ;'"* 
and  ascribe  to  Christ  the  words,  "  The  bread  which  I  will 
give  is  my  flesh,  for  the  life  of  the  world;"!  and  speak  of 
him  (through  the  lips  of  John  the  Baptist)  as  the  "  Lamb  of 
God  that  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world. ":|: 

The  evangelist,  in   defining   the   end   of  Christ's  mission, 
cannot  have  known  his  own  mind  so  ill  as  to  say,  in  one 
chapter,   '  it  was,  to  sever   and     guard    such   as  should    be 
saved  from  the  benighted  world  doomed  to  die  in  its  sins  ;  ' 
and    in   another,    '  it  was,    to    take  away  the  world's   sins, 
and  dispense  with  severance  by  saving  the  whole.'     Nor  is  it 
possible  to  relieve  him  of  the  absolute  antagonism,  pervading 
his  gospel,  between  the  world  as  wrapped   in  darkness  and 
ruled  by  an  antigod,  and  the  kingdom  of  light   under  the 
Father  and  the  Son.     The  wonderful  discourse  and  prayer  of 
Jesus  on  the  eve  of  the  betrayal  and  in  full  view  of  the  end, 
are  full  of  the  play  of  this   antithesis,   and  not  less  plainly 
treat  "  the  world  "  as  alien  and  cast-away,  than  heaven  as  the 
home  of  a  spiritual  communion  no  longer  local.     The  solution 
of  the  difficulty  is  to  be  sought  in  the  different  extensions 
given  to  the  term  "  World  "  in  different  passages.     The  use 
of  it  to  denote  the  Gentiles   as   distinguished   from   Israel  is 
familiar  to  every  one  ;  as  when   the   Apostle   Paul   says  "  If 
their    (i.e.,    the    Jews')    fall  is  the  riches  of  the  Avorld,  and 
their  loss  the  riches   of  the  Gentiles,"  and   "  if  the  casting 
away  of  them  is  the  reconciling  of  the  world,  what  shall  the 
receiving  of  them  be,  but  life  from  the  dead  ?  "§    Thus  used  by 
one  of  the  covenanted  people,  it  was  tantamount  to  what  lay 
outside  the  religious  pale,  as  marked  off  from  what  lay  within 
it.     This  meaning  was  naturally  carried  into  Christian  usage  ; 
of  course  without  reference  any  longer  to  lineage  or  nation, 
but  touching  only  matters  of  faith  and  character  ;  so  that 
it   was   applied   impartially   to   the   whole   class   of  secular- 
minded  people   in  human  society,  as  opposed  to  i^ersons  of 
earnest  religious  life.     In  the  fourth  gospel  it  occurs  in  both 
these  senses.     When  Jesus  says,  "  If  the  world  hate  you,  ye 

»  Johu  iii.  17.  f  vi.  51.  :;  i.  29.  §  Rom.  xi.  12,  15. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES    OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  501 

know  that  it  hath  hated  me  before  it  hated  yon :  if  ye  were 
of  the  world,  the  world  wonld  love  its  own :  bnt  becanse  ye 
are  not  of  the  world,  but  I  chose  you  out  of  the  world,  there- 
fore the  world  hateth  you ;  "*  and  "  I  pray  not  for  the 
world;"  "  I  pray  not  that  thou  shouldst  take  these  out  of 
the  world,  but  that  thou  shouldst  keep  them  from  the  evil 
one;"t  it  is  plain  that  his  language  refers,  not  to  the 
"  World "  which  he  was  sent  to  save,  but  to  the  opposite 
realm  of  hopeless  unbelief,  ruled  by  "  the  Prince  of  this 
world."  The  word  is  used  in  its  wider  extension,  to  cover  all 
that  is  alien  to  the  contents  of  the  Christian  pale.  When,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  said  that  "  God  so  loved  the  world  that 
he  gave  his  only-begotten  Son,  ....  that  the  world  through 
him  should  be  saved;"!  that  Christ  "  taketh  away  the  sin 
of  the  world  :"§  that  he  "gives  his  flesh  for  the  life  of  the 
world;  "II  the  word  cannot  possibly  include  those  who  "  did 
not  take  in  his  words  because  they  were  not  of  God, "IF  but  of 
the  False  One  ;  and  who,  for  not  believing  on  him,  were  to 
"  die  in  their  sins  ;"**  it  is  used  in  the  Pauline  sense,  to  mark 
the  cancelling  of  the  Israelite  distinction,  and  the  appeal  of 
the  gospel  to  the  "  world  "  beyond  :  the  disqualification  of  the 
Gentiles  being  removed,  there  would  be  found  among  them 
multitudes  ready  to  hear  the  voice  of  the  good  Shepherd,  and 
follow  him  because  they  were  "of  his  sheep."  This  was  the 
newly-opened  "  world  "  of  possible  Christians  to  whom  the 
bread  from  heaven  would  be  eternal  life.  In  this  sense  it  was 
that  Caiaphas  was  supposed  to  "prophesy  that  he  (Jesus) 
should  die  for  the  nation :  and  not  for  tJie  nation  only,  but 
that  he  might  gather  together  in  one  the  chihlren  of  God  that 
are  scattered  abroad. "W  He  gave  himself  therefore  "  for  the 
life  of  the  world,"  1)y  throwing  open  to  great  Gentile  popula- 
tions the  divine  promises  in  which  they  had  had  no  part,  and 
gleaning  from  their  vast  field,  as  well  as  from  the  little  plot 
of  Israel,  whatever  was  worthy  to  be  gathered  with  "  the 
wheat  into  his  garner  :"  but  this  very  severance  marked  out 
more  clearly  the  tares  reserved  for  destruction. 

*  Jolm  XV.  18,  19.  t  xvii.  9,  15.  t  iii-  IG.  17. 

§  i.  29.  II  vi.  51.  ir  viii.  -17. 

••  viii.  24.  .  tt  >:i-  51,52. 


502  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVIAE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

This  universality  in  the  Christian  appeal  to  mankind  is  the 
most  prominent  effect  attributed  in  the  fourth  gospel  to  the 
Cross,  and  always  with  expressions  of  jo}'.  And  no  wonder  : 
for  when  the  evangelist  wrote,  the  Church  had  broken  with 
Judaism,  after  saving  and  appropriating  all  its  spiritual  in- 
heritance from  its  history  and  its  prophets  ;  and  was  enriching 
its  own  thought  and  multiplying  its  members  from  Gentile 
adherents  of  Greek  culture,  impressed  by  its  monotheism,  its 
pure  and  disinterested  ethics,  and  its  sublime  trusts  for  the 
human  soul :  and  the  outward  growth  and  inward  change 
which  are  passing  before  his  eyes  he  describes  as  if  foreseen 
and  taken  to  heart  by  Jesus  in  his  last  days  on  earth.  When 
some  Greek  strangers,  happening  to  be  at  Jerusalem  at  the 
fatal  passover,  sought  an  interview  with  him  through  Philip 
and  Andrew,  something  in  their  tone  and  purpose,  in  contrast 
with  the  bitter  enmity  of  his  own  people,  realized  within  him 
the  actual  darkness  of  the  present,  and  the  possible  glory  of 
a  future  more  at  one  with  his  affections,  and  more  ready  for  a 
worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  Deep  as  is  the  trouble  of  his 
soul  at  the  tragic  parting  from  the  Israel  he  came  to  save,  the 
wave  of  sorrow  is  turned  into  light  as  it  breaks  and  flies 
through  the  air  of  time,  with  the  sprinkling  of  regeneration 
for  waiting  hearts  afar.  The  momentary  prayer  "  Father, 
save  me  from  this  hour,"  is  instantly  replaced  by  "  Father, 
glorify  thy  name  :"  and  the  answer  "  I  have  both  glorified  it 
and  I  will  glorify  it  again,"  receives  its  interpretation  in  the 
words,  "  Now  is  the  judgment  of  this  world,  now  will  the 
Prince  of  this  world  be  cast  out ;  and  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from 
the  earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  myself."*  The  evangelist 
sees  "  the  Prince  of  this  world  "  disappointed  of  his  triumph 
in  the  cross  :  the  silencing  of  the  divine  message  was  as  vain 
as  the  entombment  of  the  messenger :  both  had  had  their 
resurrection  :  and  ever  since,  the  armies  of  Satan  were  thinned 
by  deserters,  and  from  his  favourite  heathendom  itself  multi- 
tudes were  flocking  to  the  standard  of  Christ.  The  grain  of 
wheat  was  small  and  lone  until  it  fell  into  the  earth  to  die  ; 
but,  flung  away  to  die,  it  has  borne  much  fruit. 

This  idea,  of  the  fndtfidness  of  the  cross,  is  the  chief  ground 

*  John  xii.  20-32. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF  THE   WORK  OF  JESUS.  503 

of  the  evangelist's  treatment  of  it,  not  as  a  limniliation  to  be 
excused,  but  as  the  last  grace  and  glory  of  the  Divine  visit. 
It  gives  indefinite  extension  to  the  influence  of  the  manifested 
"Word";  but  it  does  not  change  that  influence:  it  is  still 
the  new  birth  into  higher  life  by  assimilation  to  the  Father 
through  the  Son,  the  transforming  power  of  a  godlike 
humanity  once  visible  on  earth,  now  self-revealed  from 
heaven.  It  is  a  purification  that  sweeps  through  the  soul 
on  the  very  light  of  that  vision,  and  leaves  there  new  truth, 
new  aims,  new  love,  the  quickened  germs  of  an  eternal  life. 
If  it  "  take  away  sins,"  it  is  not  by  annulling  their  guilt,  but 
by  withering  their  power  and  leaving  them  dead.  The  juridical 
assumption  of  the  apostle  Paul  that  sanctification  cannot  begin 
till  the  score  of  past  transgressions  is  cleared  off  by  a  penalty 
paid  for  us  on  the  cross,  and  that  then  first  the  spirit  can 
meet  the  love  of  a  reconciled  God,  plays  no  part  in  this 
gospel,  and  is  quite  foreign  to  its  pervading  genius.  The  only 
words  which  admit,  though  they  do  not  require,  such  a  Pauline 
interpretation,  are  those  with  which  John  the  Baptist  is  said 
to  have  pointed  out  the  approach  of  Jesus  to  him,  "Behold 
the  lamb  of  God,  that  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world."* 
The  passage  is  so  entirely  out  of  harmony  with  the  general 
tone  of  the  gospel,  which  does  not  lay  stress  on  the  extinction 
of  sin  or  ever  mention  repentance  and  forgiveness,  and  assigns 
no  atoning  efficacy  to  the  death  of  Christ,  that  I  cannot  but 
assent  to  the  opinion  of  Oscar  Holtzmann,  that  "  here  we 
evidently  come  across  the  reminiscence  of  an  earlier  concep- 
tion of  the  work  of  Christ,  the  language  of  which  the  author 
still  uses,  without  however  adopting  it  as  strictly  his  own."t 
If  however  the  "taking  away  sins"  be  understood  not  as 
carrxfxmj  off  lU  j)ii.m$]imcnt,\  hut  a,Q  quasJdnfi  its  essence  in  the 
soul,  i.e.,  as  purification,  another  resource  presents  itself. 
This  gospel  identifies  the  cross,  in  its  date  and  in  its  meaning, 
with  the  Passover.  The  Apostle  Paul  gives  it  the  same  mean- 
ing :  "our  passover  also  has  been  sacrificed,  even  Christ." 
How   docs  he  apply  this  comparison?      Is  it   to  show   the 

•  John  i.  29.  f  Das  Joliaunes-Evaugelium,  pp.  50,  51. 

i  The  word  aipfiv  means  in  the  active  "  to  take  away  ";  and  only  iu  the 
middle  voice  "to  take  upon  one's  self." 


504  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV, 

Corinthians  that  their  sins  are  atoned  for  and  cancelled  ?  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  to  reprove  their  disgraceful  continuance  in 
certain  members  of  the  Church,  and  warning  them  against 
their  spread,  and  reminding  them  that  the  time  has  come 
which  pledges  the  disciples  to  newness  of  life ;  and  that,  as 
the  paschal  festival  was  the  signal  for  clearing  the  house  of 
all  impurity  of  leaven,  and  beginning  a  week  for  unleavened 
bread  alone,  so  the  Christians  had  entered  upon  a  term  pledged 
to  untainted  life.  "  Know  ye  not  that  a  little  leaven  leaveneth 
the  whole  lump  ?  Purge  out  the  old  leaven,  that  ye  may  be  a 
new  lump,  even  as  ye  are  unleavened.  For  our  passover  also 
hath  been  sacrificed,  even  Christ :  wherefore  let  us  keep  the 
feast,  not  with  the  old  leaven,  neither  with  the  leaven  of 
malice  and  wickedness,  but  with  the  unleavened  bread  of 
sincerity  and  truth."*  If  among  the  materials  which  the 
evangelist  worked  up  in  the  composition  of  his  gospel  we  may 
suppose  the  chief  epistles  of  Paul  to  be  present,  this  passage 
may  have  suggested  to  him  the  identification  of  Christ  with 
the  passover,  described  under  the  phrase  "  lamb  of  God ;" 
and  in  that  case  the  very  source  from  which  he  drew  would 
determine  the  words  "  taketh  away  sin "  to  the  meaning 
which  I  have  given  them  of  jpimfication  from  the  presence 
of  sin. 

The  consensus  between  the  apostle  and  the  evangelist  in 
their  application  of  this  comparison  is  not  disturbed  by  the 
resort  of  the  latter  to  the  phrase  6  afxvoQ  tov  ^eov,  Lamb  of 
God,  as  designating  the  person  of  Jesus, — a  phrase  unknown 
to  the  apostle  and  to  the  synoptists,  and  reappearing  (without 
the  TOV  3-foiJ)  only  in  the  so-called  first  epistle  of  Peter,  t  a 
production  belonging  to  the  beginning  of  the  second  century. 
The  name,  as  applied  to  Christ,  is  undoubtedly  borrowed  from 
Isaiah  liii.,  in  which  the  apostle  first  found  relief  from  the  horror 
of  the  cross,  and  discovered  that  Messiah  "  had  to  suffer  these 
things  ere  he  entered  into  glory,"  to  "  bear  our  griefs  and  carry 
our  sorrows  ;  "  "to  be  wounded  for  our  transgressions  and 
bruised  for  our  iniquities  " ;  and  to  realize  the  picture,  "  he 
humbled  himself  and  opened  not  his  mouth  ;  as  a  lamb  that 
is  led  to  the  slaughter,  and  as  a  sheep  before  her  shearers  is 

*  1  Cor.  V.  6-8,  ■'(  i.  19. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  505 

dumb."  This  is  the  text  from  which  the  apostle  Philip 
"  preached  Jesus  "  to  the  treasurer  of  ^Ethiopia,*  and  sent 
him  on  his  way  baptized  and  in  the  spirit :  it  is  no  wonder 
that  a  description  so  apposite  to  the  recent  sufferer,  "  rejected 
of  men  "  and  seemingly  "  stricken  of  God  "  on  Calvary,  and 
yet  "  exalted  and  lifted  up  on  high,"  should  at  last  have  fixed 
upon  him,  from  its  own  tenderest  image,  the  title  the  "  Lamb 
of  God."  The  phrase  denotes  no  more  than  the  silent  and 
patient  endurance  of  unmerited  suffering  inflicted  by  those 
on  whose  behalf  it  is  accepted  ;  and  is  suggested  by  the 
experience  that  it  is  ever  the  prayers  and  tears,  the  self- 
devotion  and  unflinching  sacrifices  of  the  righteous,  that  save 
the  reckless  from  their  ruin  and  wake  the  sleeping  conscience 
of  an  unfaithful  world. 

No  instance  occurs  of  the  use  of  this  phrase  as  a  name 
for  Jesus  in  writings  of  the  apostolic  age  :  and  out  of  thirty 
examples  of  it  in  the  New  Testament,  twenty-eight  are  found 
in  the  Apocalypse,  the  unusual  word  aov'iov  being  invariably 
substituted  for  a^ivoq  to  denote  the  Lamb.  As  in  the  Seer's 
heavenly  vision  it  is  "  seen  as  though  it  had  been  slain,"  and 
is  celebrated  in  a  "  new  song  "  as  having  "  purchased  unto 
God  with  his  blood  men  of  every  tribe  and  tongue  and  people 
and  nation,  and  made  them  to  be  unto  God  a  kingdom  and 
priests,"  it  is  certainly  the  death  of  Christ  as  a  redeeming 
power  on  which  the  stress  is  laid  :  and  as  the  multitude  thus 
gathered  are  seen  in  robes  "  made  white  "  because  washed 
"  in  the  blood  of  the  lamb,"t  the  writer  may  have  conceived 
of  the  redemption  as  effected  by  vicarious  incidence  of  penalty 
and  transfer  of  righteousness,  as  in  the  Pauline  theory.  His 
language  is  consistent  with  this  conception  :  the  robes  washed 
white  may  be  the  syml)ol  of  past  stains  of  sin  expunged  by 
an  atoning  medium.  But  they  may  just  as  well  be  the  symbol 
of  present  purity  gained  by  '  putting  off  the  old  man,'  and 
'  putting  on  the  new  man  '  through  '  renewal  of  the  spirit 
of  the  mind,'  re-"  created  after  God  in  righteousness  and 
holiness  of  truth."!  In  the  former  sense,  the  "washing" 
would  be  needed  for  all  men  alike  ;  "  for  there  is  no  difference 
between  Jew  and  Greek":   "all,  both  Jew  and  Greek,  are 

*  Acts  viii.  27-10.       t  Rev.  v.  G,  9,  10;  vii.  9,  11.       *  Eph.  iv.  22-21. 


5o6  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

under  sin."*  But  the  Seer's  description  applies  to  a  Gentile 
multitude  alone:  for  he  has  found  "  the  children  of  Israel," 
12,000  from  each  tribe,  already  "  sealed  upon  their  forehead, 
with  the  seal  of  the  living  God  "  ;  and  it  is  in  distinction 
from  these,  and  in  addition  to  them,  that  the  white-robed 
multitude  "which  no  man  could  number"  appears  "out  of 
every  nation  and  of  all  peoples  and  tongues  "  ; — an  obvious 
description  of  the  Gentile  world,  to  which  the  cross  and  the 
resurrection  threw  open  the  nevv^  life  of  relation  to  the  living 
God.  It  is  the  influx  of  this  host,  once  estranged,  now  drawn 
into  the  new  life  of  purity  and  communion  with  heaven,  which 
the  Seer  celebrates  as  the  glory  of  the  "Lamb"  that  was 
slain. 

No  light  can  be  thrown  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  fourth 
gospel  from  the  contents  of  a  production  removed  from  it, 
like  the  Apocalypse,  so  nearly  to  the  opposite  extreme  of 
Christian  thought.  But  as  there  is  no  other  storehouse  to 
which  we  can  resort  for  instances  of  the  personal  use  of  the 
term  '  Lamb,'  it  was  desirable  to  ascertain  whether  the  word 
was  limited  exclusively  to  the  idea  of  expiation  which  has 
nowhere  else  any  place  in  the  evangelist.  The  answer  that 
may  be  given  to  this  question  can  avail,  it  must  be  confessed, 
only  as  an  evidence  of  popular  usage.  All  the  passages  in 
which  the  Lamb  is  mentioned  are  shown,  by  critical  con- 
siderations, which  appear  to  me  conclusive,  to  be  the  work  of 
a  single  Christian  interpolator,  probably  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  first  century,  operating  upon  the  text  of  a  Jewish  Apoca- 
lypse which  he  breaks  and  confuses,  greatly  to  the  discomfi- 
ture of  all  subsequent  interpreters.!  His  frequent  recurrence 
to  the  figure  of  the  Lamb,  without  being  able  to  assign  to 
him  any  part  essential  to  the  action  of  the  drama,  together 
with  the  total  absence  of  the  image  from  the  interpolations 
of  an  editor  forty  years  later,  t  would  seem  to  point  to  a 
usage  new  and  in  vogue  at  the  earlier  date,  but  fading  away 
or  otherwise  shrunk  at  the  later.     Hence  perhaps  the  evan- 

*  Eom.  X.  12,  iii.  9. 

+  Eberhard  Vischer  ;  Die  Offenbarung  Job.  eiue  Jiidiscbe  Apokalypse, 
pp.  35-GO. 

X  Pfleiderer  ;  Das  Urchristeuthum,  p.  351. 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK  OF  JESUS.  507 

gelist,  having  himself  passed  heyond  it,  planted  his  solitary 
retrospect  of  it  upon  John  the  Baptist,  at  a  time  when  the 
full  significance  of  the  ministry  of  Christ  on  earth  was  un- 
developed and  had  not  yet  escaped  its  Jewish  mould.  Even 
so,  it  cannot  be  historically  accredited  to  the  Baptist.  "  That 
John  the  Baptist  cannot  really  have  uttered  these  words  in 
reference  to  Christ,"  says  Oscar  Holtzmann,  "  follows  not 
only  from  the  form  of  expression,  the  abstract  /j  cif^aoTia  tov 
Konfjiov  being  out  of  character  with  his  practical  eye  for  the 
individual  and  concrete  (Luke  iii.  7-17),  but  still  more  from 
the  purport  of  the  phrase  ;  inasmuch  as  the  Baptist,  we  may 
be  sure,  knew  at  all  events  just  as  little  about  an  atoning 
death  of  Christ  as  Paul  before  his  conversion  (1  Cor.  i. 
21-25  ;  Gal.  vi,  14).  And  since  the  expression  accorded  no 
better  with  the  evangelist's  o^Yn  peculiar  sphere  of  thought, 
to  which  the  idea  of  forgiveness  of  sins  is  foreign,  it  is  plain 
that  he  must  have  written  at  a  time  the  needs  of  which  were 
not  adequately  met  within  the  circle  of  either  the  Synoptists' 
religious  view,  or  of  Paul's  and  his  followers'  with  their  vari- 
ous gradations  of  difference."* 

Thus  far,  the  Work  of  Christ,  as  presented  in  the  fourth 
gospel,  contemplates  the  two  following  ends :  To  sanctify  the 
children  of  God,  drawn  to  him  through  his  personal  manifes- 
tation of  what  God  is,  and  loves,  and  eternalizes,  and  sever 
them  from  the  cast-off  world  by  selective  spiritual  affinities. 

To  throw  open  the  field  of  selective  affinity  to  the  human 
race  at  large,  by  his  death  and  known  return  to  the  life  with 
God.  Thus  "  lifted  u}),"  and  presenting  to  faith  One  Living 
God  and  a  humanity  perfected  in  immortality,  he  will  draw 
all  men,  of  whatever  nation,  unto  him. 

There  was  yet  another  end  embraced  in  the  work  of  Christ, 
as  conceived  by  the  evangelist,  viz.  : 

To  perpetuate  the  sanctifying  effect  of  his  incarnation,  and 
turn  the  concentrated  glory  of  his  personal  appearance  on 
the  field  of  history  into  a  permanent  light  and  spring  of 
growing  life  for  mankhid.  On  the  accomplishment  of  this 
end  by  the  virtual  prolongation  of  his  visible  presence  in  the 
invisible  Paraclete  I  have  had  occasion  to  speak  in  treating  of 

*  Das  Jolianues-evaugelium,  p.  51. 


5o8  SEVERANCE    OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

the  impersonation  of  "  the  Word;  "  and  need  only  add  a  few 
words  to  replace  the  reader  at  the  pomt  of  view  to  which  he 
was  there  led.  So  long  as  Christ  was  upon  earth,  he  was  the 
sole  focus  of  vivif3ang  influence  ;  and  to  catch  the  glow  of 
truth  and  love  that  issued  thence  it  was  needful  to  he  near. 
To  his  disciples  close  at  hand  he  was  the  sacred  guide,  the 
present  comforter,  the  intercessor  who  prayed  the  Father  on 
their  behalf,  and  kept  them  pure  by  the  power  of  his  spirit. 
But  this  could  be  no  more  than  a  dependent  sanctification, 
and  could  not  pass  the  inner  eircle  of  his  followers.  In  death, 
the  incarnation  ceased :  the  imprisoned  glory  escaped  its 
bounds  ;  from  the  human  individuality  it  passed  indeed  home 
to  its  reunion  with  the  Father  ;  but  no  longer  to  be  secluded 
in  that  Divine  retreat,  but  to  enfold  now  the  earth  which  it 
had  visited  as  well  as  the  heaven  whence  it  came.  He  would 
not  really  leave  those  who  had  clung  to  him  and  put  their 
trust  in  him  ;  he  would  come  to  them,  not  indeed  in  the  finite 
and  familiar  form,  but  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Paraclete,  the 
omnipresent  sustainer  of  the  soul,  which  he  would  send  them 
from  the  Father.  This, — as  soon  as  the  first  sorrow  of  part- 
ing had  been  lifted  from  their  hearts, — would  more  than  take 
his  place  ;  and  to  compel  them  to  this  discovery  it  was 
"  expedient  for  them  that  he  should  go  away."  He  could  be 
with  them  but  for  awhile  ;  the  Spirit  would  abide  with  them 
for  ever.  He  was  their  external  guide ;  the  Spirit  would  be 
icitlnn  them,  blended  with  their  very  personality,  an  instant 
spring  of  truth  and  sanctity.  Thus  released  from  limits  and 
abroad  as  a  luminous  atmosphere  of  the  world,  the  Divine 
Spirit  would  continue  as  well  as  diffuse  the  new  and  heavenly 
life  which  had  made  his  appearance  among  mankind  so  full 
of  grace  and  truth.  The  bread  of  heaven,  thus  broken  and 
distributed,  would  feed  a  multitude  which  none  could  count. 
Infinite  multiplication  and  development  of  the  higher  life  of 
humanity  was  thus  rendered  jjossible  :  the  implicit  sanctity 
became  explicit ;  and  the  personal  passes  into  the  universal. 

And  so  the  great  end  is  reached,  that  the  mingling  of  the 
Divine  and  the  human  in  Christ  is  not  there  on  its  own 
account,  as  a  gem  of  individual  biography,  unique  and 
unrepeated  ;  but  as  the  type  and  the  expression  of  a  fact  in 


Chap.  Ill,]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  509 

the  constitution  of  our  nature.  Tlie  intimate  relation  between 
God  and  man  which  declared  itself  in  the  utterance,  "  I  am 
not  alone,  but  the  Father  is  with  me,"  belongs  to  the  essence 
of  the  soul  and  consecrates  every  human  life.  Nor  is  it  any- 
thing but  simple  and  indisputable  truth  to  say,  that  the 
consciousness  of  this  has  taken  its  commencement  from  the 
experience  and  religion  of  Jesus ;  and  has  imparted  to 
Christendom  its  deeper  tone  of  feeling,  its  higher  conception 
of  purity,  and  its  inextinguishable  hope  for  humanity. 

Note. 

In  the  foregoing  chapter,  all  the  inferences  respecting  the 
work  of  Christ,  as  conceived  by  the  evangelist,  are  drawn 
from  the  contents  of  his  gospel.  If  account  had  been  taken 
also  of  the  first  Epistle  current  under  the  same  name,  I  am 
aware  that  some  of  these  inferences  must  have  given  way,  or 
been  modified,  under  the  application  of  the  extended  test. 
Such  corrections  I  should  have  freely  made,  had  I  been  able 
to  satisfy  myself  that  the  gospel  and  the  letter  proceeded  from 
the  same  author.  But  though  long  held  in  suspense  by  the 
apparent  equipoise  of  the  evidence  for  and  against  their 
identity  of  origin,  I  am  at  last  more  impressed  by  a  few  fun- 
damental differences  of  religious  conception  pervading  the 
two  writings,  than  by  several  agreements  in  terminology  and 
secondary  categories  of  thought,  which  point  to  some  common 
relation  to  the  same  school.  A  critical  discussion  of  the 
question  is  beyond  the  scope  of  my  design  and  of  my  com- 
petency ;  and  I  can  onl}-  indicate  the  characteristic  features 
in  the  two  productions  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  could  not 
co-exist  in  the  same  mind. 

(1.)  The  idea  of  Eepentance  and  Forgiveness  are  foreign  to 
the  evangelist's  conception  of  the  relation  between  God  and 
man,  and  the  words  never  occur.  In  the  Epistle  (i.  8,  9) 
we  read,  "  If  we  say  we  have  no  sin,  we  deceive  ourselves, 
and  the  truth  is  not  in  us.  If  we  confess  our  sins,  he  is 
faithful  and  just  to  forgive  us  our  sins,  and  to  cleanse  us 
from  all  unrighteousness." 

(2.)  The  g()S[)cl  knows  nothing  of  an  atoning  or  propitiatory 


5IO  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

efficacy  in  the  blood  of  Christ.  The  Epistle  says,  "  The 
blood  of  Jesus  his  Son  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin  "  (i.  7).  "I 
write  unto  j^ou,  my  little  children,  because  your  sins  are  for- 
given you  for  his  name's  sake"  (ii.  12).  "  Herein  is  love, 
not  that  we  loved  God,  but  that  he  loved  us,  and  sent  his  Son 
to  be  the  propitiation  for  our  sins  "  (iv.  10). 

3.  The  word  Paraclete  is  used  in  the  Gospel  exclusively  of 
the  Holy  Spirit ;  in  the  Epistle,  of  Jesus  Christ :  "  I  write 
these  things  unto  you,  that  ye  may  not  sin.  And  if  any  man 
sin,  we  have  a  Paraclete  with  the  Father,  Jesus  Christ  the 
righteous :  and  he  is  the  propitiation  for  our  sins :  and  not 
ours  only,  but  also  for  the  whole  world  "  (ii.  1,2).  The  word, 
moreover,  is  here  applied  to  Jesus  Christ  in  the  sense  of 
Advocate,  and  is  so  rendered  in  the  English  version,  old  and 
revised.  But  in  the  parting  discourse  of  Jesus,  as  given  in 
the  gospel,  he  declines  this  intercessory  character.  "  In  that 
day  ye  shall  ask  in  my  name  ;  and  I  say  not  unto  jon  that  I 
will  pray  the  Father  for  you ;  for  the  Father  himself  loveth 
you,  because  ye  have  loved  me,  and  have  believed  that  I  came 
forth  from  the  Father  "  (xvi.  26,  27). 

4.  The  expectation  of  the  Parusia,  or  near  return  of  Christ, 
to  wind  up  human  history  and  establish  the  theocracy,  is 
absent  from  the  Gospel,  with  its  attendant  mythology  of  pre- 
monitory signs.  In  the  Epistle  we  read,  "  Little  children,  it 
is  the  last  hour  :  and  as  ye  have  heard  that  antichrist  cometh, 
even  now  there  have  arisen  many  antichrists ;  whereby  we 
know  that  it  is  the  last  hour  "  (ii.  18).  "  We  know  that,  when 
he  shall  be  manifested,  we  shall  be  like  him,  for  we  shall  see 
him  even  as  he  is  "  (iii.  2). 

5.  Notwithstanding  the  evangelist's  silence  respecting  any 
"  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  on  the  clouds  of  heaven,"  he 
retains,  as  we  have  seen,  a  remnant  of  eschatology  in  the 
phrase  "the  last  day."  What  exactly  he  included  in  it  is 
difficult  to  determine,  after  he  had  discharged  from  it  the 
greater  part  of  its  generally  accepted  contents.  To  Christ,  on 
the  eve  of  his  departure,  he  attributes  the  promise  :  "  I  go  to 
prepare  a  place  for  you.  And  if  I  go  and  prepare  a  place  for 
you,  I  come  again,  and  will  receive  you  unto  myself ;  that 
where  I  am,  there  ye  may  be  also,"  i.e.,  in  one  of  the  "  many 


Chap.  III.]       THEORIES   OF   THE    WORK   OF  JESUS.  511 

mansions  of  the  Father's  house"  (xiv.  2-4)  ;  and  in  his  sub- 
sequent prayer  he  adds,  on  behalf  not  of  his  personal  disciples, 
but  of  "  them  also  that  believe  on  me  through  their  word," 
"  Father,  they  whom  thou  hast  given  me,  I  will  that  where  I 
am  they  also  may  be  with  me,  that  they  may  behold  my  glory 
which  thou  hast  given  me :  for  thou  lovedst  me  before  the 
foundation  of  the  world"  (xvii.  20-24).  The  end  therefore 
accomplished  by  this  "  coming  again "  would  be,  not  the 
abolishing  of  all  rule  and  authority  and  power  on  earth,  in 
order  to  "  reign  till  he  hath  put  all  enemies  under  his 
feet  "  (1  Cor.  xv.  24,  25) ;  but  simply  to  raise  up  his  faithful 
disciples  to  "be  with  him  where  he  is  "  and  " behold  the 
glory  which  God  hath  given  him  "  in  the  heavenly  mansions. 
In  the  absence  of  any  collective  date,  the  hearer  or  reader  of 
such  promise  would  probably  look  for  its  intended  fulfilment 
in  each  separate  disciple  successively  called  away.  But  the 
language  is  not  inconsistent  with  an  intermediate  sleep  of 
the  dead  till  their  number  was  made  up  and  the  moment  of 
awakening  should  have  arrived  for  all.  In  this  case  would  be 
realized  that  other  word  of  Christ,  "  This  is  the  will  of  him 
that  sent  me,  that  of  all  that  he  hath  given  me  I  should  lose 
nothing,  but  should  rahc  it  up  at  the  last  day  "  (vi.  39).  The 
Gospel  then  and  the  Epistle  are  not  at  variance  as  to  the 
existence  of  a  "  last  day."  But  in  their  account  of  it  they 
differ:  in  the  Epistle,  it  is  the  "jti(himent  day,''  "Herein  is 
love  made  perfect,  that  we  may  have  boldness  in  the  day  of 
judgment"  (iv.  17)  ;  in  the  Gospel,  it  is  the  resurrection  day; 
and  the  process  of  judgment  is  expressl}^  shifted  away  from 
that  future  day  into  the  present,  and  the  eternal  life  or  death 
determined  and  self-pronounced  alread}^  in  the  devotion  or 
aversion  of  each  soul  to  the  Holy  One  of  God.  "  He  that  be- 
lieveih  on  him.  is  not  judged  :  and  he  that  believeth  not  hath 
been  judged  already ,hec<iuse  he  hath  not  believed  on  the  name 
of  the  only-begotten  Son  of  God  "  (iii.  18)  :  "  if  any  man  hear 
my  sayings  and  keep  them  not,  I  judge  him  not ;  for  I  came 
not  to  judge  the  world,  l)ut  to  save  the  world.  He  that  re- 
jecteth  me  and  receiveth  not  my  sayings,  hath  one  that  judgeth 
him  :  the  word  that  I  speak,  the  same  shall  judge  him  in  the 
last  day"  (xii.  47,  48). 


512  SEVERANCE    OF   UN DI VIAE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

In  the  face  of  these  differences,  and  of  a  contrast  in  the 
Hterary  moulding  of  the  thought  throughout,  which  is  equally 
striking,  the  agreements  appear  to  me  to  plead  inadequately 
for  unity  of  authorship.  The  antitheses  and  syzygies, — Light 
and  Darkness,  Truth  and  Falsehood,  Love  and  Hate,  Life  and 
Death,  God  and  Devil, — are  so  akin  to  the  elements  thrown 
into  the  gnostic  speculations,  one  type  of  which  (the  Docetic) 
the  writer  of  the  Epistle  encounters  in  a  passionate  polemic, 
that  they  may  well  be  regarded  rather  as  the  common  vocabu- 
lary of  theosophic  criticism  in  a  given  area  and  age,  than  as 
characteristics  of  personal  thought  and  taste.  Had  we  larger 
remains  of  the  religious  and  philosophical  literature  of  the 
first  half  of  the  second  century,  we  should  probably  be  intro- 
duced to  stages  of  development  filling  the  gap  which  at  present 
we  vainly  endeavour  to  bridge  by  overstraining  the  possible 
combinations  of  our  present  fragmentary  materials. 


CHAPTEE  IV. 

THEORIES    OF    UNION    WITH    GOD» 

§  1.  PrescNt  Media  of  Grace. 

Whatever  theories  might  be  formed  among  the  first  dis- 
ciples respecting  the  person  and  the  work  of  Jesus,  on  one 
point  they  were  all  agreed  :  viz.,  that  they  had  reference  to  a 
crisis  yet  to  come,  and  that  his  visit  to  the  world  was  only 
suspended  for  awhile,  lest  the  kingdom  of  God  should  be  quite 
too  empty.  He  had  set  in  action,  by  his  Hfe  and  by  his  death, 
the  redeeming  power  adequate  for  all  who  stood  within  its 
reach  ;  but  it  needed  distribution  beyond  the  "  little  flock  "  of 
his  personal  adherents  ;  and  to  allow  this  expansion  of  a  mere 
school  into  a  commonwealth  ready  for  his  return,  a  brief  interval 
was  appointed,  and  an  administration  established  for  widening 
the  circle  of  "  such  as  should  be  saved."  The  problem  of  this 
season  of  suspense  was  simply  one  of  spiritual  organization  : 
to  gather  together,  and  animate  by  the  collective  Spirit,  the 
community  of  the  City  of  God,  and  hold  its  members  apart 
from  the  polluted  and  perishable  elements  around  ;  to  keep 
them  so  minded  as  if  Christ  were  still  in  their  midst,  and  to 
spread  round  them  an  influence  equivalent  to  his  continued 
agency  upon  their  hearts.  The  responsibility  rested  upon  his 
apostles.  This  was  their  field  of  activity :  till  he  returned, 
they  were  to  take  up  and  carry  on  his  work,  and  through  the 
cities  of  the  East  and  AVest  nniltiply  the  stations  of  the 
faithful,  who  should  be  as  sentinels  on  the  watch  for  him. 
The  question  thus  inevitably  arose.  What  provision  had  he 
left  for  this  period  and  function  of  his  absence"?  "W'itli  what 
resources,  of  persuasion  or  of  power  that  could  at  all  replace 
his  own,  had  he  entrusted  them  ?  We  know  not  what  passed 
through  their  minds  from  tlie  first  dawn  of  this  question  upon 
them  to  its  full  answer :  for,  the  result  only,  and  not  the  pro- 

L   L 


514  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE   ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

cess,  is  laid  open  to  us.  But  the  solution  at  last  assumed 
this  form  :  He  had  left  them  (1.)  The  Holy  Sjnrit,  which  came 
to  them  from  heaven  to  be  in  his  stead,  and  which,  they 
found,  spread  by  a  Divine  diffusion  through  their  converts, 
and  united  them  all  in  living  links  with  Christ  above :  and 
(2.)  The  redeeming  efficacy  of  Ids  Death  in  their  stead,  which 
cancelled  the  curse  of  the  flesh  in  humanity,  and  commenced 
already  the  assimilation  of  the  believer  to  the  immortal  Son 
of  God.  These  two, — the  Spirit  and  the  Atoning  Cross, — were 
the  provisions  for  carrying  on  the  work  of  Christ  at  second 
hand,  and  preparing  a  Divine  society  for  his  return.  In 
arming  his  apostles  with  these  supernatural  graces,  he  had 
more  than  compensated  his  absence  from  them :  he  had 
virtually  become  everywhere  present,  and  multiplied  his  points 
of  contact  with  the  world ;  and  the  light  which  had  been  only 
local,  held  to  a  pure  personal  centre,  passed  into  a  universal 
element,  accessible  wherever  humanity  could  be  reached. 

But  who  were  to  share  in  these  supernatural  graces  ? 
Might  any  one  help  himself  to  them,  or  pretend  to  them,  or, 
like  Simon  Magus,  bargain  for  them,  at  will  ?  If  not,  how 
was  the  candidate  to  get  into  the  sacred  circle  whose  proper 
endowments  they  were  ?  So  long  as  Jesus  himself  was  there, 
he  could  select  his  own,  and  keep  them  "in  the  Father's 
name,"  that  "none  of  them  be  lost:"  but,  now  that  he  is 
gone,  and  that  crowds  will  be  pressing  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  as  if  "  to  take  it  by  force,"  some  conditions  of  entrance 
must  be  defined,  some  pledges  of  faithfulness  be  required  ; 
and  the  Divine  graces  be  withheld  till  the  human  acts  are 
performed  which  publicly  commit  the  disciples'  faith  and 
conscience.  The  ministry  of  Jesus  himself  suggested  what 
these  acts  should  be  ;  for  it  had  opened  with  the  baptism,  and 
closed  with  the  last  supper  :  the  one  followed  by  the  descent 
of  the  Spirit :  the  other  by  the  sacrifice  of  himself.  Let  these 
be  the  model  for  every  disciple's  self-dedication,  the  beginning 
and  completion  of  his  union  with  Christ.  Does  he  yearn  for 
the  Holy  Spirit  ?  Let  him  be  baptized.  Does  he  long  "to 
be  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  corruption,"  and  share  in 
the  immortality  of  Christ?  Let  him  frequent  the  Lord's 
supper,  and  there  he  will  appropriate  the  benefits  of  the  cross, 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES    OE   UNION    WITH  GOD.  515 

and  be  fed  on  the  manna  of  eternal  life.  And  so  was  the 
correspondency  established  between  earth  and  heaven  ;  and 
two  human  usages  were  instituted  which  were  not  the  signs 
only,  but  the  conditions,  of  the  Divine  graces  respectively 
linked  with  them.  Here,  in  this  small  germ,  we  have  the 
origin  of  that  ritual  and  sacerdotal  development  of  Christianity 
which,  at  every  characteristic  point,  is  a  simple  reversal  of  the 
Religion  of  Jesus,  and,  wherever  it  exists,  does  but  wield  his 
power  to  destroy  his  work. 

It  is  one  of  the  significant  differences  between  the  fourth 
gospel  and  the  others,  that  it  represents  Jesus  himself,  during 
his  ministry,  as  enrolling  disciples  by  baptism,  and  employing 
his  apostles  to  perform  the  rite  ;  and  this,  with  such  publicity 
and  success  as  to  surpass  even  the  repute  of  John  the  Baptist, 
and  create  a  panic  among  the  Pharisees.*  To  the  synoptists 
no  such  rite  is  known  in  the  society  of  disciples,  while  Jesus 
is  with  them.  The  call  of  the  apostles  is  complete  without  it ; 
their  investiture  with  the  Spiritual  powders  of  their  mission  is 
independent  of  it ;  and  when  he  sends  them  forth  to  proclaim 
the  glad  tidings  through  the  villages  and  cities  of  Israel,  and 
minutely  instructs  them  how  to  acquit  themselves  in  their 
oftice,  neither  in  the  charge  which  he  gives,  nor  in  the  report 
which  they  bring  back,  is  there  any  word  of  baptism.!  This 
is  one  of  the  many  traits  of  historic  truth  which  unconsciously 
show  that,  the  nearer  we  approach  his  person,  the  more  do 
we  leave  every  outward  form  and  questionable  claim  behind, 
and  are  left  alone  with  the  pure  elements  of  spiritual  religion. 
The  very  account  which  tells  us  that  at  last,  after  his  resur- 
rection, he  commissioned  his  apostles  to  go  and  baptize  among 
all  nations, t  betraj'ed  itself  by  speaking  in  the  Trinitarian 
language  of  the  next  century,  and  compels  us  to  see  in  it  tlu; 
ecclesiastical  editor,  and  not  the  evangelist,  much  less  the 
founder  himself.  Xo  historic  trace  appears  of  this  baptismal 
formula  earlier  than  the  "  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles, "§ 
and  the  first  Apology  of  Justin  ,  about  the  middle  of  the 
second    century :    and  more  than    a  century  later,  Cyprian 

*  John  iii.  22.  iv.  1.         f  Matt.  x.  ;  Luke  ix.  1-10.         :;:  Jlatt.  xxviii.  19. 
§  Ch.  vii.   1,  3.     The  oldest   Church   Manual,  cd.  Phil.  Scliaff:    Ediub., 
Clark,  1887.  II  Apol.  i.  61. 

L  L    '2 


5i6  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

found  it  necessary  to  insist  upon  the  use  of  it  instead  of  the 
older  phrase  baptized  "  into  Christ  Jesus,"  or  into  the  "  name 
of  the  Lord  Jesus."*  Paul  alone,  of  the  apostles,  was  baptized, 
ere  he  was  "filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost;"  and  he  certainly 
was  baptized  simply  "into  Christ  Jesus. "t  Yet  the  tri- 
personal  form,  unhistorical  as  it  is,  is  actually  insisted  on  as 
essential  by  almost  every  Church  in  Clu'lstendom,  and,  if 
you  have  not  had  it  pronounced  over  you,  the  ecclesiastical 
authorities  cast  you  out  as  a  heathen  man,  and  will  accord  to 
you  neither  Christian  recognition  in  your  life,  nor  Christian 
burial  in  your  death.  It  is  a  rule  which  would  condemn  as 
invalid  every  recorded  baptism  performed  by  an  apostle  ;  for 
if  the  book  of  Acts  may  be  trusted,  the  invariable  usage  was 
baptism  "  in  the  name  of  Christ  Jesus," t  and  not  "in  the 
name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Spirit." 
And  doubtless  the  author  is  as  good  a  witness  for  the  usage  of 
his  own  time  (about  a.d.  115)  as  for  that  of  the  period  where- 
of he  treats. 

How  soon  the  initiatory  rite  established  itself  among  ths 
Christians,  and  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  essential  j)relim- 
inary  of  the  Holy  Spirit,§  it  is  impossible  to  say.  But 
that  it  did  not  at  first  assume  this  dignified  connection  is  clear 
from  the  disparaging  distinction  drawn  by  the  Apostle  Paul, 
that  he  was  "  sent  notto  baptize,  hut  to  preach  the  gospel,"  and 
from  the  confirmator}'  fact  which  he  adduces  that  in  all  his 
church  at  Corinth  there  were  but  two  or  three  whom  he  had 
baptized.  "I  thank  God  that  I  baptized  none  of  you,  save 
Crispus  and  Gains  ;  lest  any  man  should  say  that  ye  were 
baptized  into  my  name  :  and  I  baptized  also  the  household  of 
Stephanas:  besides,  Iknow  not  whether  I  baptized  any  other."  || 
How  could  this  be,  if  the  Holy  Spirit  were  an  apostolic  gift, 
and  baptism  its  medium  and  date  ?     Nay,  we  are  met  by  a 

*  Gal.  iii.  27  ;  Acts  xix.  5,  x.  48.  Cyprian,  Ep.  73,  lG-18,  has  to  controvert 
those  who  still  use  the  shorter  form. 

t  Rom.  vi.  3.  t  Acts  ii.  38. 

§  It  deserves  remark,  however,  by  those  who  insist  on  the  sacramental 
doctrine,  that  in  the  case  of  Cornelius  and  his  friends,  Peter  administers 
baptism  because  the  Holy  Spirit  had  already  fallen  upon  them,  and  given 
him  adequate  warrant  for  the  act.     Acts  x.  44-48. 

11  1  Cor.  i.  14-lG. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  517 

still  more  startling  fact,  viz.,  that  with  no  knowledge  but  of 
the  baptism  of  repentance,  and  without  having  even  heard  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  pious  and  expectant  Jews,  who  had  merely 
listened  to  the  message  of  John  the  Baptist,  "  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  at  hand,''  and  taken  ]ds  baptism  in  Jordan,  were 
actually  treated  already  as  "  disciples."  Apollos,  who  was 
one  of  them,  "  a  learned  man,  mighty  in  the  Scriptures,'"'  is 
described  as  having  been  "  instructed  in  the  way  of  the  Lord," 
and  as  "teaching  diligently  the  things  concerning  Jesus, 
and  speaking  boldly  in  the  synagogue."  Then,  with  only 
such  further  instruction  as  two  private  Christians  (Aquila  and 
Priscilla)  could  give  in  conversation  with  him,  and  with 
apparently  no  additional  baptism  at  all,  he  is  commended  as 
a  missionary  to  the  brethren  in  Achaia ;  where  he  "  profits 
much  those  who  had  believed  through  grace;"  "publicly 
showing  by  the  Scriptures  that  Jesus  was  the  Christ."*  Facts 
like  these  afford  glimpses  into  a  time  when  the  Christian 
usages  had  not  3'et  set  into  separatist  forms  and  been  fur- 
nished with  their  ultimate  doctrinal  interpretation,  and  when, 
on  the  borders  of  devout  and  waiting  Judaism,  there  was  still 
a  possible  communion  between  those  who  took,  and  those 
who  hardly  knew,  the  name  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  There  was 
a  Holy  Spirit  which  would  embrace  them  both  ;  speaking  not 
in  any  "  new  tongues,"  but  in  the  undying  language  of 
ancient  piety,  the  tones  made  sweet  and  solemn  by  the  voices 
of  prophets  and  righteous  men,  the  eternal  sigh  of  human 
prayer  and  hope  ;  and  they  could  listen  to  these  breathings 
hand  in  hand,  and  had  no  occasion  to  go  apart  to  hear 
them. 

Two  ideas,  naturally  suggested  by  the  baptismal  rite,  early 
fastened  themselves  upon  it,  and  became,  through  the  per- 
version to  whicii  all  symbols  are  open,  the  copious  source  of 
later  superstition.  As  the  candidate  descended  into  the 
stream,  and  by  total  immersion  disappeared  from  view,  his 
old  self  was  said  to  sink  away  and  be  buried  in  the  deep 
water,  never  to  present  itself  again.  In  a  moment  indeed  he 
rose  once  more  above  the  surface  ;  but  not  the  same  :  it  was 
a  Pagan  that  went  in  :  it  is  a  Christian  that  comes  out :  and 

*  Acts  xviii.  24-xix.  7. 


5i8  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVLVE   ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

in  this  change  of  identity  there  is  a  fresh  creation, — a  soul 
new-horn, — a  rising  into  hfe  untried  and  glorious.  From  this 
symbolism,  hardened  into  doctrine,  and  continued  in  use 
when  the  practice  of  immersion  which  gave  it  all  its  beauty 
had  ceased,  sprang  the  notion  of  baptismal  regeneration,  the 
exchange  of  nature  for  grace,  of  alienation  for  acceptance, 
of  appointment  to  eternal  death  for  election  to  eternal  life. 

"  Are  ye  ignorant,"  says  the  apostle  Paul,  "  that  all  we 
who  were  baptized  into  Christ  Jesus  were  baptized  into  his 
death  ?  We  were  buried  therefore  with  him  through  baptism 
into  death  :  that  like  as  Christ  was  raised  from  the  dead 
through  the  glorj^  of  the  Father,  w^e  also  might  walk  in  new- 
ness of  life.  For  if  we  have  become  united  with  him  by  the 
likeness  of  his  death,  we  shall  be  also  bv  the  likeness  of  his 
resurrection."*  "  Buried  with  him  in  baptism,  ye  are  risen 
with  him  through  faith  in  the  working  of  God  who  raised  him 
from  the  dead."t  The  other  idea  is  supplied,  not  by  the  look 
of  the  baptized  person  to  the  spectator,  but  by  the  cleansing 
action  of  the  water  upon  himself.  He  takes  into  it  the  stains 
and  dust  of  a  soiling  world  :  he  comes  out  of  it  pure  as  from 
the  moulding  hand  of  God.  "  Arise  and  be  baptized,"  said 
Ananias  of  Damascus  to  the  converted  Saul,  "  and  wash  away 
thy  sins,  calling  on  his  name."t  The  symbol  happily  ex- 
j)resses  whatever  sanctifying  change  might  be  involved  in 
assuming  the  Christian  profession  :  be  it  the  simple  self- 
dedication  of  a  penitent  and  pious  heart,  or  be  it  some 
mystical  and  transforming  grace,  of  which  the  human  subject 
is  but  the  passive  recipient.  The  simplicity  of  the  former  in- 
terpretation satisfied  the  Christian  feeling  till  near  the  middle 
of  the  second  century ;  the  act  being  regarded  rather  as 
that  of  the  human  agent  voluntarily  turning  from  a  tainted 
past  to  the  purer  future,  than  as  a  Divine  bestowal  of  a  super- 
natural gift  of  immunity  or  positive  blessing.  The  "  re- 
mission of  sins  "  which  was  attached  to  it  w'as  conditional  on 
the  "  repentance  "  or  change  of  mind  expressed  in  the  act, 
and  was  in  simple  conformity  w'ith  the  character  and  govern- 
ment of  God,  and  did  not  impart  to  the  baptismal  rite  any 
exceptional  or  mysterious  quality  as  "  a  means   of  grace." 

*  Eom.  vi.  3-5.  f  Col.  ii.  12.  +  Acts  xxii.  16. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  519 

There  ^Yas  still  room,  however,  for  recognizing  a  free  gift  from 
God  :  because  the  past  misdoings  now  brought  into  conscious- 
ness were  due  to  ignorance  of  the  true  relations  of  man  and 
God  and  the  supreme  good  for  the  human  soul ;  and  the  new 
light  which  reveals  them  as  they  are,  and  induces  the  change 
to  a  better  mind,  is  a  Divine  mercy  quite  unearned.  With 
this  reservation  of  a  "  grace  "  behind,  the  remission  is  often 
treated  as  merely  covering  the  sins  of  ignorance  lamented  as 
soon  as  seen,  which  in  truth  are  no  sins  at  all.  "All  such 
transgressions  as  you  have  committed  in  ignorance,  through 
want  of  clear  knowledge  of  God,  will  be  remitted  to  you,  if 
repented  of  when  you  came  to  know  him."*  Remission, 
sought  under  these  conditions,  implies  grateful  acceptance  of 
a  new  light  of  faith,  and  requires  therefore  the  awakened 
intelligence  of  an  active  human  subject,  and  no  mere  passive 
recipient  of  a  foreign  gift.  It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that 
the  application  of  baptism  to  infants  made  its  appearance  at 
a  later  date :  and  that  when  it  did,  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
second  century,  the  pleadings  both  for  it  and  against  it  indi- 
cated a  marked  tendency  in  the  movement  of  the  ecclesiastical 
mind  towards  magical  superstition ;  though  by  no  means 
prepared  as  yet  for  the  formulas  which  speak  of  "  the  mystical 
washing  away  of  sin,"  and  in  the  case  of  the  infant  of 
"  washing  him  "  "  for  the  remission  of  sins,"  and  "  sanctifying 
him  with  the  Holy  Ghost,"  "  that  he  may  be  delivered  from 
God's  wrath."  The  cleansing  away  of  the  blight  on  the  past, 
and  the  entrance  on  a  pure  future,  were  apt  to  be  set  forth  in 
terms  so  unmeasured  as  to  need  some  more  dignified  sign 
than  the  commonplace  act  of  dipping  in  water :  to  qualify  it 
to  serve  it  as  "  the  bath  of  regeneration  "  something  excep- 
tional must  be  done  to  the  water  :  it  must  be  exposed  to  the 
prayer  of  exorcism,  and  the  recitation  of  the  triune  name,  to 
clear  it  of  evil  spirits ;  or  at  any  rate  be  blessed  by  the 
priest,  to  prepare  it  as  the  vehicle  of  the  Holy  Spirit :  or,  ere 
it  quits  the  head  of  the  baptized,  feel  the  hand  of  the  bishop, 
consecrating  its  use.  Cyprian  saj's  expressly  "  the  priest 
must  sanctify  the  water  ;"  for,  "  unless  it  has  the  Holy  Spirit, 

*  Clem.  Alex.  Strom.  VI.  vi.  48,  quoted  from  the  Prcachiug  of  Peter.     Har- 
nack,  p.  142  n. 


520  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

it  cannot  cleanse  away  sin."*  By  such  accumulation  of 
essentials,  all  thrown  upon  the  material  medium  or  the  official 
administration  of  the  rite,  the  personal  subject  of  it  is 
reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  passive  recipient,  put  under  an 
enchantment ;  and  it  cannot  matter  whether  he  be  brought  to 
it  by  mature  thought  and  will  of  his  own,  or  exposed  to  it  as  a 
helpless  babe  may  be  carried  indifferently  to  be  vaccinated  or 
to  be  christened.  So  far  had  this  descent  into  mere  magic 
gone  by  Irenaeus'  time  as  to  ruin  the  spiritual  beauty  of  the 
words  "  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me,  and  forbid  them 
not,"  by  making  them  mean,  "  Take  your  infants  to  the 
font."t  It  was  not,  however,  without  resistance  that  the 
pasdo-baptism  which  ventured  on  this  plea  obtained  recogni- 
tion as  a  sacrament  of  the  Church.  The  profession  of  faith 
and  pledge  of  pui-pose  which  baptism  required  and  the  mfant 
^could  not  make  had  to  be  assumed  by  sponsors;  whose 
vicarious  responsibility  for  a  personality  yet  undeveloped  was 
naturally  deemed  most  perilous.  TertuUian,  who  was  not  apt 
to  strain  at  gnats  of  either  faith  or  feeling,  protests  against 
the  growing  practice  of  baptizing  children:  "It  is  well,  he 
thinks,  to  postpone  the  rite  in  adaptation  to  each  person's 
lot  and  disposition  and  age,  especially  where  children  are 
concerned  :  let  them  wait  for  adolescence  :  let  them  come 
with  open  eyes,  when  they  have  been  taught  what  they  come 
to  :  let  them  be  made  Christians  when  they  can  know  Christ. 
Wliy  should  the  age  of  innocence  be  in  any  haste  for  the 
remission  of  sins?"  "Those  who  understand  the  grave 
significance  of  baptism  will  be  more  afraid  of  its  arrival  than 
of  its  delay ;  conscience  as  yet  mviolate  runs  no  risk  of 
missing  its  salvation."! 

This  curious  specimen  of  third-century  theology  cannot  but 
affect  the  modern  reader  with  a  strangely  mixed  feeling.  He 
is  pleasurably  struck,  perhaps,  by  the  boldness  with  which  it 
snatches  "  from  God's  wrath  "  "  the  little  ones  whose  angels 
always  behold  the  face  of  the  Father  in  heaven."  But  he 
will  notice  with  regret  that  it  escapes  one  superstition  only  to 
plunge  into  another.     For,  assuming  that  baptism  washes  out 

*  Ep.  Ixx.  1,  Ixxiv.  5.     Ham.  395  n.         f  II.  xxii.  4.  %  De  bapt.  18. 


Chip.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  521 

the  sins  of  the  past,  its  argument  is  that,  as  the  rite  can 
come  only  once,  the  later  you  take  it,  the  clearer  you  will 
stand  :  and  it  is  foolish  to  waste  upon  the  light  flakes  of 
childish  transgression  the  power  which  would  equally  get  rid 
of  the  poisonous  load  of  a  long  worldly  life.  It  is  well  known 
in  what  high  appreciation  "the  first  Christian  Emperor" 
held  the  force  of  this  argument :  and  that,  in  taking  stock  of 
all  that  he  had  done  for  the  Church  and  perpetrated  upon  his 
family  and  his  enemies,  and  achieved  for  himself,  Constantino 
deemed  it  best  to  be  baptized  on  his  deathbed,  and  secure  & 
favoured  place  on  the  roll  of  both  worlds. 

From  such  wretched  soteriological  calculations  modern 
Christendom  has  everywhere  emerged.  Not  so,  alas !  with 
the  other  half,  withstood  by  Tertuhian,  of  the  baptismal 
superstition.  It  is  humiliating  to  think  that,  in  this  age, 
the  Anglican  Church  has  reaccented  the  extreme  ritual 
doctrine,  as  expressed  by  one  of  her  own  archbishops,  "  that 
baptism  is  necessary  for  the  salvation  of  infants;"  "no 
baptism,  no  entrance:  nor  can  infants  creep  in  any  other 
ordinary  way."*  In  the  presence  of  such  statements  no 
evidence  is  needed  of  the  debasing  effect  of  all  sacramental 
doctrine  :  by  attributing  moral  and  spiritual  effects,  unattested 
by  natural  consciousness,  to  physical  acts  and  material  things, 
it  confuses  alike  the  understanding  and  the  conscience,  turns 
the  Divine  world  into  a  realm  of  magic,  and  pi-eserves  an 
inexhaustible  fund  of  credulity  for  the  operations  of  impostors 
and  the  enthralment  of  mankind. 

Not  more  fortunate  than  the  rite  of  baptism  has  been  the 
parallel  institution  of  the  "  Lord's  supper."  That  it  is  not 
now  what  it  originally  was,  that  it  has  had  a  history,  during 
which  new  meanings  have  bsen  drawn  from  it  or  imported 
into  it,  and  that  the  change  has  for  the  most  part  been  from 
the  natural  to  the  mystical,  from  the  simple  to  the  complex, 
from  the  human  to  tb.e  hieratic,  few  will  deny  but  the 
officials  of  the  mass.  A  copious  ecclesiastical  Kterature,  both 
historical  and  polemical,  enables  us  to  trace  the  process  of 
change  through  sixteen  centuries,  and  take  account  of  super 

*  Laud's  Coufcrcucc  with  Fisher,  §  15. 


522  SEVERANCE    OF   UiYDIVLXE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

stitious  accretions  which  have  been  added  in  that  time.  But 
in  order  to  estimate  the  whole  amount  of  deviation  from  the 
archetypal  fact,  it  is  needful  to  gain  insight  into  the  remain- 
ing period  beyond,  and  above  all  into  the  evening  hours  passed 
by  a  little  band  of  disciples  with  their  Master  in  a  certain 
"large  upper  room  furnished  "  for  the  passover  in  Jerusalem. 
In  what  was  then  and  there  thought  and  said  and  done  is  the 
standard  from  which  all  growths  and  declensions  must  be 
marked  off,  and  here  we  are  met  bv  difficulties  which  can  no 
longer  be  set  at  rest  by  a  summary  appeal  to  the  authority  of 
Scripture. 

There  are  four  accounts  of  the  memorable  incident  at  the 
last  supper  ;  that  of  the  Apostle  Paul  and  those  of  the  three 
Synoptists.     They  are  as  follows  : — 

Paul,  1  Cor.  xi.  23-26.  The  Lord  Jesus  in  the  night  in 
which  he  was  betrayed,  took  bread ;  and  when  he  had  given 
thanks,  he  brake  it,  and  said,  This  is  my  body,  which  is  for 
you  ;  this  do  in  remembrance  of  me.  In  like  manner  also  the 
cup  after  the  supper,  saying,  This  cup  is  the  new  covenant 
in  my  blood  :  this  do,  as  oft  as  ye  drink  it,  in  remembrance 
of  me.  For  as  oft  as  ye  eat  this  bread  and  drink  the  cup,  ye 
proclaim  the  Lord's  death  till  he  come. 

Mark  xiv.  22-25.  And  as  they  were  eating,  he  took  bread, 
and  when  he  had  given  thanks,  he  brake  it,  and  gave  to  them, 
and  said,  Take  ye,  this  is  my  body.  And  he  took  a  cup,  and 
when  he  had  given  thanks,  he  gave  it  to  them  ;  and  they  all 
drank  of  it ;  and  he  said  unto  them.  This  is  my  blood  of  the 
covenant,  which  is  shed  for  many  :  Yerily,  I  say  unto  you,  I 
will  no  more  drink  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine,  until  that  day  when 
I  drink  it  new  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 

Luke  xxii.  15-18.  He  said  unto  them,  With  desire  I  have 
desired  to  eat  this  passover  with  you  before  I  suffer  ;  for  I  say 
unto  you,  I  will  not  eat  it  until  it  be  fulfilled  in  the  kingdom 
of  God.  And  he  took  the  cup,  and  when  he  had  given 
thanks,  he  said.  Take  this,  and  divide  it  among  yourselves : 
for  I  say  unto  you,  I  will  not  drink  from  henceforth  of 
the  fruit  of  the  vine,  until  the  kingdom  of  God  shall 
come. 

19,   20.     And  he  took   bread ;    and   when   he   had    given 


Chap.  IV.]        THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  COD.  523 

thanks,  he  brake  it,  and  gave  it  to  them,  saying,  This  is  my 
body,  which  is  given  for  you  ;  this  do  in  remembrance  of 
me.  And  the  cup  in  like  manner  after  supper,  saying, 
This  cup  is  the  new  covenant  in  my  blood  which  is  poured 
out  for  vou. 

Matthew  xxvi.  26-29.  And  as  they  were  eating,  Jesus  took 
bread,  and  blessed  and  brake  it ;  and  he  gave  to  the  disciples, 
and  said,  Take,  eat,  this  is  my  body.  And  he  took  a  cup,  and 
gave  thanks,  and  gave  to  them,  saying.  Drink  ye  all  of  it ; 
for  this  is  my  blood  of  the  covenant,  which  is  shed  for  many 
unto  remission  of  sins.  But  I  say  unto  you,  I  will  not  drink 
henceforth  of  this  fruit  of  the  vine,  until  that  day  when  I 
drink  it  new  in  my  Father's  kingdom. 

In  estimating  the  combined  and  relative  value  of  these 
statements,  it  must  never  be  forgotten  how  dependent  we  are 
upon  internal  evidence  :  the  synoptical  gospels  being  compila- 
tions, by  unknown  hands  and  of  uncertain  dates,  probal)ly 
between  a.d.  75  and  a.d.  120,  of  the  popular  traditions  respect- 
ing the  life  of  Jesus :  and  the  statement  of  Paul  proceeding 
from  one  who  was  no  witness  of  the  scene  described,  and  to 
whom  the  central  figure  in  it  was  a  purely  ideal  person 
modelled  in  conformity  with  theory  without  the  check  of 
memory.  Narratives  produced  under  such  conditions  may 
well  contain  what  is  historical ;  but  that  they  should  contain 
nothing  else  is  simply  impossible  without  a  miraculous  over- 
ruling of  natural  causation. 

It  cannot  be  urged  that,  when  these  accounts  were  written, 
the  incident  related  was  too  fresh  to  suffer  from  the  operation 
of  perverting  causes.  Those  causes  are  not  exacting  in  their 
demand  for  time.  And  here  the  earliest  report  is  written  by 
the  Apostle  Paul  to  the  Corinthians  in  the  spring  of  a.d.  58, 
i.e.,  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the  event,  and  twenty  j'ears 
after  his  first  opportunity  of  hearing  about  it  from  the  apostles 
present  at  it :  prior  to  which  he  had  already  worked  out,  and 
for  three  years  had  preached,  his  independent  gospel,  with  its 
distinctive  doctrine  of  the  cross.  That  doctrine  so  possessed 
him  as  to  absorb  or  modif}'  all  fresh  knowledge  or  conceptions 
that  entered  his  mind.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  what  he 
heard  at  Jerusalem  would  bo  told  him  in  explanation  of  a  Com- 


524  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

munion-nsage  already  established  in  memory  of  the  paschal 
night.*  Since  that  evening,  not  only  had  the  crucifixion  of 
Jesus  happened,  and  the  resurrection  caught  them  up  in  sur- 
prise and  turned  him  into  the  Son  of  God,  but  the  theory  of  a 
suffering  Messiah  had  been  worked  out,  and  the  advent  become 
a  fixed  expectation  and  chief  object-matter  of  the  gospel  it- 

*  It  will  perhaps  occur  to  the  reader  as  an  objection  to  this  use  of  the 
apostle's  visit  to  Peter,  that  he  disclaimed  all  dependence  in  his  work  on 
those  who  were  apostles  before  him,  and  said  that  they  "added  nothing  to 
him  "  (Gal.  ii.  6),  and  that  his  account  of  the  last  supper  is  expressly  intro- 
duced with  the  words  "  I  received  of  the  Lord  that  which  I  also  delivered 
"onto  you."  The  objection  opens  the  difficult  question,  "  What  kind  of  fact 
is  covered  by  the  phrase  '  received  of  the  Lord  '  ?  "  It  certainly  implies  the 
apostle's  acceptance  of  what  is  communicated  as  verified  by  Christ.  But  it  does 
not  on  this  account  exclude  information  from  human  witnesses  :  it  is  enough 
that  it  includes  an  authorization  to  seek  it ;  and  this  Paul  would  undoubtedly 
suppose  himself  to  have.  His  second  visit  to  Jerusalem,  fourteen  years  later 
(a.d.  52),  he  himself  says  was  "  by  revelation  "  (Gal.  ii.  2).  By  what  marks 
he  would  satisfy  liimself  that  what  he  "  received  "  was  vouched  for  by  the 
heavenly  Christ,  it  is  impossible  to  say  ;  for  since  that  "Christ"  was  to  him 
not  any  human  "  Jesus  "  whom  he  had  known,  and  would  know  again  if  they 
met  and  talked  together,  but  an  ideal  being  simply  present  to  thought,  and 
identified  only  by  distinctive  conceptions,  it  seems  certain  that  anything  new 
and  impressive  in  close  accord  with  these  conceptions  would  readily  find 
shelter  under  sanction  of  the  same  invisible  personality.  The  apostle  him- 
self, in  the  counsel  which  he  gives,  seems  to  waver  at  times  between  the  tone 
of  the  mere  adviser  and  that  of  the  authoritative  mouthpiece  of  Christ 
(1  Cor.  vii.  10,  12),  as  if  swaying  on  the  verge  between  inspired  and  unin- 
spired thought.  Those  who  allow  no  place  to  such  psychological  conditions 
have  no  alternative,  consistent  with  the  apostle's  veracity,  but  to  represent 
it  to  themselves  as  an  historical  fact  that  Jesus  came  back  from  heaven  and, 
in  an  interview  with  Paul,  described  the  scene  at  the  last  supper,  reciting  his 
own  words  in  distributing  the  unleavened  cake  and  handing  the  wine  cup. 
If  this  was  what  the  apostle  affirmed,  might  not  the  Corinthians  have  reason 
to  say,  "  The  experience  you  relate  we  do  not  question  as  a  phenomenon  of 
your  personal  life  ;  but  being  limited  to  yourself,  and  unconformable  to  the 
human  ways  of  knowing,  it  can  have  no  objective  validity  for  others  "  ? 

The  right  mode  of  regarding  such  language  as  that  of  the  apostle,  where 
he  speaks  of  his  communion  with  Christ,  was  brought  vividly  home  to  me 
some  years  ago,  while  spending  some  months  among  a  Wesleyan  population 
in  a  retired  district  of  the  North  of  England.  I  was  much  impressed  by  the 
simple  piety  of  the  people,  taken  one  by  one,  and  by  the  disciplinary  power 
of  their  social  organization  in  the  diffusion  of  an  affectionate  spirit,  and  the 
formation  of  a  standard  of  character  far  above  the  average.  They  were  suf- 
ficiently out  of  the  world  to  have  retained  the  free  resort  in  conversation  to 
religious  conceptions,  so  that  they  seemed  almost  to  think  in  the  images  and 
feel  in  conformity  with  the  enthusiasms  of  scripture.  One  of  their  elders, 
taking  a  member  of  my  family  a  drive  through  the  country,  pulled  up  to 
speak  to  a  stonebreaker  at  the  roadside ;  when  a  dialogue  to  the  following 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNION    WITH  GOD.  525 

self ;  and  all  these  elements,  long  taken  up  into  the  meaning 
of  the  commemorative  rite,  would  inevitably  be  thrown  l)aek 
into  the  story  of  its  origin.  "When,  therefore,  at  the  earliest 
in  A.D.  38  (about  six  years  after  the  event),  the  passover  scene 
was  described  by  Paul,  it  had  gathered  into  it  the  whole 
gospel  of  the  twelve,  and  so  far  as  this  was  less  and  other  than 

effect  took  place : — Good-morning,  Nat ;   glad  to  see  you  ;  I  -wanted  to  ask 
you  how  did  your  prayer-meeting  come  off  ?     Had  you  a  good  time  of  it  ? 
—  Stonebreaker :  Aye,  aye,  'twere  heart-searching  enough  to  some  of  us,  the 
Lord  knows  :  but  for  the  chief  matter,  there  were  somewhat  amiss,  as  if  we 
had  grieved  his  spirit ;  for  he  would  not  hearken  to  us,  hut  sent  us  empty 
away. — Elder  :  How  so,  Nat  ?  what  were  you  putting  before  him  ? — Stone- 
breaker  :  The  troubled  soul  of  sister  IMargaret.     She  would  have  it  she  is  a 
castaway ;  she  had  lost  hold  of  her  Saviour :  day  and  night  she  washed  his 
feet  with  tears,  but  he  would  never  say  to  her,  Thy  sins  are  forgiven :  she 
seemed  wasting  like,  and  going  off  into  the  shadow  of  death.     We  besought 
the  Lord  to  take  pity  on  her,  and  show  her  the  light  of  his  face ;  for  that 
she  was  ever  watching  for  it,  as  they  that  watch  for  the  morning.     But  we 
prevailed  nothing  :  the  poor  soul  was  still  sunk  very  low,  and  seemed  like 
one  forsaken.     Howsomever,  a  way  is  opening  out  of  her  darkness  :  the  Lord 
has  not  forgotten  her :  she  will  yet  praise  him  for  the  health  of  his  counte- 
nance.—Elder  :  What  makes  you  so  sure  of  that  ?— Stonebreaker :  Well,  you 
see,  when  I  got  home,  her  woful  face  was  so  fast  on  me  I  couldna  rightly 
sleep :  and  as  I  lay  abed,  the  Lord  Jesus  came  to  me,  and  bid  me  not  be 
disquieted  about  the  poor  sister,  and  showed  me  a  better  way  to  cast  the  evil 
spirit  out :  saying.  You  see,  you  are  too  many  for  her,  and  her  heart  gets 
fluttered  with  all  the  people  and  tlie  prayers  :  go  to  her,  and  let  her  speak 
out  her  griefs  to  you  alone  :  tell  her  that  they  are  her  share  in  her  Saviour's 
sorrow  in  Gethsemane :  assure  her  that  his  peace  also  he  will  not  fail  to 
give  :  and  in  answer  to  her  trust,  the  promise  shall  be  fulfilled.     So  in  the 
morning  I  did  as  the  Lord  had  said ;  and  as  I  spoke  to  her  words  of  comfort, 
she  caught  and  kindled  like  at  the  hope  which  he  had  put  into  mj-  heart ; 
and  after  prayer  together,  she  seemed,  as  it  were,  renewed  :  her  countenance 
was  smoothed  and  her  eye  was  quiet :  and  ever  since,  they  say,  she  takes 
kindly  to  her  work,  and  nothing  frets  her  when  she  is  with  them  :  and  when 
she  is  alone  she  sings  a  hymn.     No  doubt,  therefore,  the  Lord  has  been  as 
good  as  his  word. 

I  cannot  verbally  reproduce  the  conversation,  still  less  preserve  in  it  the 
racy  vigour  of  the  North  country  dialect.  But  its  general  purport  and  its  dra- 
matic form  of  impersonation  are  faithfully  presented  in  the  foregoing  sketch. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  perfect  simiDlicity  and  sincerity  with  which  tlie 
talc  was  told,  and  of  the  entire  unconsciousness  with  which  inward  colloquies 
of  thought  and  outward  dialogues  of  speech  are  put  upon  the  same  level  and 
reported  in  the  same  objective  affirmations,  the  line  being  crossed  like  an 
open  boundary  overstepped  in  the  night.  The  student  of  religions  who  is  not 
prepared,  by  divesting  himself  of  his  analytical  and  logical  habits,  to  re-enter 
the  state  of  mind  in  which  this  is  possible,  must  always  remain  deficient,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  both  in  the  .sympathy  and  modes  of  intelligence  which  are 
requisite  for  a  good  interpreter. 


526  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

his  own,  how  could  he  help,  during  a  score  of  following  years, 
filling-in  and  retouching  the  significance  of  it  as  the  compend 
of  larger  truth  ? 

His  oral  informant  being  out  of  our  reach,  we  cannot  go 
behind  the  apostle's  own  account.  It  is  the  earliest  extant,  and 
was  in  existence  for  nearly  two  decades  before  any  of  the  rest. 
Nevertheless,  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  use  his  text  as  an 
original,  to  which  the  others  should  be  required  to  conform  ; 
for  an  evangelist  may  have  had  access  to  personal  or  written 
testimony  fully  equivalent  in  value  to  that  which  Paul 
received  at  Jerusalem.  The  materials  which  make  up  even 
the  common  tradition  embodied  in  the  three  synoptists,  are 
not  all  of  the  same  date ;  much  less,  the  sections  which 
are  special  to  each  ;  and  the  historical  character  of  the  several 
parts  can  be  determined  by  no  chronological  rule,  but  must 
be  estimated  by  internal  marks,  furnished  chiefly  by  a  known 
order  in  the  development  of  doctrine,  enabling  the  reader  to 
feel  an  anachronism  of  thought  in  the  midst  of  a  narrative  of 
fact.  The  extent  to  which  theoretical  prepossessions  may 
modify,  and  even  mould  anew,  the  materials  at  an  historian's 
disposal  is  strikingly  exhibited,  if  we  admit  the  Johannine  ac- 
count of  the  last  supper  into  comparison  with  the  Synoptists. 
That  both  are  descriptive  of  the  same  occasion  is  rendered  cer- 
tain by  their  many  marks  of  identity  :  in  both  we  have  the 
devil  "  entering  into  Judas  ";  Jesus  announcing  the  betrayal ; 
the  disciples  asking  which  of  them  it  can  be ;  the  answer  given 
by  the  sign  of  the  dipped  sop ;  the  prediction  of  Peter's  denial ; 
and  the  withdrawal  of  the  party  after  supper  to  the  garden  of 
betrayal.  Yet  in  the  fourth  Gospel  there  is  no  communion  of 
bread  or  ivine,  either  'personal  among  themselves  or  institutive 
for  the  future.  In  place  of  it  there  is  the  washing  of  the  dis- 
ciples' feet  ;  and,  ere  they  leave  the  room,  there  is  the  long 
discourse  and  touching  prayer,  in  which  the  Paraclete  is  pro- 
mised and  the  orphaned  band  committed  to  the  Father's  bene- 
diction and  his  Spirit's  aid.  Whence  this  entire  recast  of  the 
story  of  that  night  ?  Simply  from  this  :  that  the  symbolizing 
evangelist  had  made  up  his  mind  that  Christ  on  the  Cross 
must  be  the  crowning  antitype  of  the  slain  lamb  of  the  pass- 
over,  and  must  therefore  have  his  death  made  synchronous 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES  OF  UNION   WITH  GOD.  527 

with  the  slaying  of  the  lamb.  He  could  not  afford  to  let  him 
eat  of  the  laml),  and  himself  celebrate  the  festival  with  his 
disciples  the  day  before,  and  even  institute  a  commemoration 
of  his  doing  so.  This  ^YOuld  be  to  perpetuate,  instead  of 
abolishing,  the  purely  Israelitish  significance  of  his  religion. 
Accordingly  the  evangelist  will  not  accept  the  synoptic  report 
of  the  last  days  ;  he  will  revise  it  by  shifting  the  tragedy  for- 
wards through  twenty-four  hours,  by  removing  whatever  was 
thus  rendered  incongruous,  and  inserting  instead  what  time 
had  proved  to  be  in  true  accord  with  the  inner  spirit  and  the 
intended  universality  of  the  new  dispensation.  If  before  the 
middle  of  the  second  century  the  idealization  of  history  had 
already  taken  so  vast  a  range,  such  small  beginnings  of  the 
process  as  may  resolve  the  problems  of  the  comparative  critic 
can  hardly  be  denied  to  kindred  productions  a  century 
before. 

The  four  accounts  of  the  last  supper  cannot  all  l)e  both 
correct  and  sufficient,  containing  as  they  do  several 
variances. 

(1.)  In  Mark  and  Matthew  the  distribution  of  the  bread  and 
the  circulation  of  the  cup  constitute  together  an  incident  of 
the  immediate  occasion,  appropriate  to  the  crisis  and  the  per- 
sonal relations  of  those  who  were  present.  But  it  does  not 
profess  to  look  beyond  that  room  ;  no  provision  is  made  for  its 
repetition  or  its  extension.  There  is  no  hint  of  an  '*  institu- 
tion "  to  be  set  on  foot.  Even  the  prospective  terms,  "  in  re- 
membrance of  me,"  which  might  look  no  further  than  that 
little  band  of  personal  companions,  are  absent.  The  express 
appointment  of  a  permanent  rite,  contained  in  these  words, 
and  in  the  "  This  do  "  (with  or  without  the  "  As  oft  as  ye 
drink  it  "),  is  limited  to  the  Pauline  passage  and  to  Luke, 
which  is  taken  from  it.  As  Mark  exhibits  the  oldest  form  of 
the  Jerusalem  common  tradition,  it  is  probable  that  he 
here  comes  nearest  to  the  oral  source  of  Paul's  first  know- 
ledge. 

(2.)  Mark  and  ]\Iatthew  also  agree  in  another  negative 
feature.  The  words  of  Jesus  when  giving  the  bread,  "  This  is 
my  body,"  stand  alone,  without  the  addition  of  "  for  3'ou,"  or 
"  given  for  you." 


528  SEVERANCE    OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

(3.)  All  attribute  to  Jesus,  when  handing  the  cup,  the  state- 
ment it  is  "  my  blood  of  the  covenant  "  (Mark),  or  "  the  new 
covenant  in  my  blood  ;"  Luke  adding,  "  Shed  for  you,-"  Mark 
and  Matthew,  "for  many.'" 

(4.)  To  these  Matthew  alone  adds  further,  "for  the  remission 
of  sins." 

(5.)  Besides  these  differences  in  the  parallels  to  the  Pauline 
statement,  there  is  in  Luke,  as  a  prelude  to  his  whole  account 
of  the  institution,  a  prior  handing  of  the  cup  by  Jesus,  as  a 
farewell  pledge  at  parting,  with  the  words,  "  Take  this  and 
divide  it  among  yourselves :  for  I  say  unto  you,  I  will  not 
drink  from  henceforth  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine  until  the  King- 
dom of  God  shall  come."  And  this,  again,  is  preceded  by  the 
corresponding  statement  about  the  meal,  "  I  have  greatly  de- 
sired to  eat  this  passover  with  you  before  I  suffer :  for  I  say 
imto  you,  I  will  not  eat  it,  until  it  be  fulfilled  in  the  Kingdom 
of  God."  We  have  thus  a  duplicate  eating  and  drinking  ; 
first,  the  joint  partaking,  for  the  last  time,  of  the  usual 
paschal  supper ;  and  afterwards  a  special  passing  of  the  bread 
and  the  cup,  as  the  initial  act  of  a  usage  to  be  continued  till 
the  Advent.  By  this  peculiarity  the  evangelist  does  but  bring 
into  stronger  relief  Paul's,  "  In  Hke  manner  the  cup  also,  after 
sunper,"  and  mark  the  known  custom  of  the  Church  in  his 
time ;  viz.,  of  assembling  the  members  at  a  common  table  in 
expression  of  their  equal  brotherhood  ;  and  following  the  actual 
meal  by  a  Eucharistic  offering  for  the  gifts  of  nature  and  the 
grace  of  Christ.  Of  these  parts,  when  the}'  come  to  be  dis- 
tinguished, the  first  was  the  "  Agape,"  the  second  the 
"  Eucharist." 

Unless  the  reader  carries  to  these  narratives  dogmatic 
assumptions  which  bar  all  historical  criticism,  viz.,  that  Jesus 
knew  himself  to  be  Messiah,  accepted  and  prearranged  his 
death  as  a  vicarious  atonement  for  Jew  and  Gentile  alike,  and 
his  speedy  return  from  heaven  to  set  up  "  the  Kingdom  "  and 
preside  at  its  "  table  with  Abraham,  and  Isaac,  and  Jacob,"  as 
well  as  his  disciples,  and  that  Paul  and  the  Synoptists  were 
exempt  from  the  liabilities  of  human  authorship,  he  cannot 
look  upon  these  texts  as  an  untouched  photograph  of  objective 
facts   at   the   sitting   which  they   represent.     The  historical 


Chap.  iv.J         THEORIES   OF   UNION   WITH  GOD.  529 

nucleus  is  doubtless  there  ;  but  not  without  a  nimbus  of  inter- 
pretation, and  some  added  colouring  by  more  hands  than  one. 
Eeasons  already  given  render  it  probable  that  Jesus  never  as- 
sumed the  Messianic  character,  and  forl)ade  any  claim  to  it  on 
his  behalf;  and  more  than  prol)able  that  the  doctrine  of  a 
suffering  Messiah  was  worked  out  to  fit  the  ideal  to  his  case  ; 
and  nothing  less  than  certain  that  the  vicarious  theory  of  the 
cross,  with  the  admission  of  the  Gentiles  to  the  promises  of 
Israel,  was  "  the  mystery  "  reserved  for  the  last,  and  not  "  the 
least,  of  all  the  apostles,"  Yet  all  these  ideas  are  thrown 
back  upon  Jesus  himself,  and  put  into  acts  and  words  which 
make  up  the  scene  at  the  last  supper.  He  is  made  to  say,  in 
his  anticipation  of  death,  "  The  Son  of  Man  goeth,  even  as  it 
is  written  of  him  :"*  thus  taking  that  j)hrase  himself  in  a 
Messianic  sense  which  was  not  appropriated  to  him  till  the 
resurrection  had  declared  it  to  be  his  ;  and  assuming,  as 
already  familiar,  the  doctrine  of  a  suffering  Messiah,  which 
first  broke  on  his  discii:»les  after  he  was  gone.  The  "new 
covenant"  of  which  he  is  said  to  speak  carries  an  idea  foreign 
to  his  teaching  (where  the  words  do  not  occur)  and  equally 
characteristic  of  the  Pauline  reasoning.  Not  less  surely  is 
the  redemption  ])y  shedding  of  blood  a  j^ost  event mn  inter- 
pretation of  his  death ;  nor  would  stress  have  been  laid  on 
the  ''many"  for  whom  it  was  shed,  before  the  inpouring  of 
Gentiles  into  the  Church.  And  who  that  has  not  indoctri- 
nated himself  out  of  all  reverent  apprehension  of  the  distinc- 
tive teaching  and  mind  of  Christ  can  suppose  him  to  make 
"  remission  of  sins  "  conditional  on  the  execution  of  a  substi- 
tute, and  denied  to  personal  repentance  and  return  of  the 
wanderer  to  the  Father's  arms  ?  In  these  phrases  I  cannot 
l)ut  see  anacln-onisms.  And  though  it  is  impossible  to  say 
exactly  how  far  Jesus  might  share  in  the  Israelite  conceptions 
of  the  future  "kingdom,"  it  relieves  me  to  think  that  the 
words  "  I  will  no  more  drink  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine  until  that 
day  when  I  shall  drink  it  new  with  you  in  the  kingdom  of 
God,"  could  hardly  be  addressed  to  his  disciples  in  that 
pathetic  hour  by  one  who,  in  rebuke  to  the  Sadducees,  had 

•  :\ravk  xiv.  21  ;  :Matt.  xxvi.  24.     Cf.  Luke  xxii,  22,  "  as  it  hath  been  detcr- 
miucd." 


530  SEVERANCE  OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

said,  "  Ye  do  err,  not  knowing  the  scriptures  nor  the  power  of 
God :  for  when  they  shall  rise  from  the  dead,  they  neither 
marry,  nor  are  given  in  marriage ;  Imt  are  as  angels  in 
heaven."* 

It  is  one  thing  however  to  mark,  in  the  text  of  a  narrative, 
incongruities  inadmissible  as  history,  and  quite  another  to 
determine  how  the  blank  is  to  be  filled  when  they  are  re- 
moved. Assured  knowledge  of  what  was  said  at  the  paschal 
supper  is  irrecoverably  gone  :  nothing  more  is  in  our  power 
than  to  narrow  the  range  of  possibility  within  which  the  real 
facts  must  lie.  "VVliile  we  may  be  certain  that  he  did  not 
announce  his  impending  death  as  what  he  had  intended  and 
provided  for  all  along,  we  may  well  believe  that  a  shadow  of 
foreboding  lay  on  his  spirit  that  evening,  deepening  towards 
its  darkest  in  Gethsemane,  and  pressing  forth  the  preluding 
tones  of  that  great  agony.  While  he  cannot  have  told  the 
disciples  who  for  months  had  been  preaching  with  him  and 
for  him  the  gospel  of  repentance  and  the  love  of  God,  that  to- 
morrow he  was  going  to  purchase  their  salvation  and  wash 
them  in  his  blood,  he  may  rather  have  called  to  mind  how 
they  had  been  with  him  in  his  temptations  and  shared  the 
rejoicings  of  his  spirit,  and  have  enjoined  them,  as  they  loved 
him,  to  remain  knit  in  the  bonds  of  their  faith  and  life  together. 
Though  he  cannot  have  promised  to  put  himself,  corporeally 
or  incorporeally,  into  any  sacramental  bread  or  wine  taken  in 
his  name,  he  may  have  desired,  when  the  world  would  not 
listen  to  him,  that  they  should  not  forget  him,  but  when,  as 
now,  they  brake  bread  and  passed  the  cup  together,  should 
remember  with  what  thankful  blessing  he  sent  these  symbols 
round,  and  should  read  in  them  and  draw  out  of  them  all  the 
meaning  of  his  living  presence.  These  simple  outpourings  of 
feeling  are  all  congenial  to  the  occasion.  It  was  a  social  meal 
of  a  band  most  closely  knit  around  a  centre  of  deepest  attach- 
ment :  it  was  a  national  festival,  stirring  to  Israelitish  piety : 
it  was  a  joyful  celebration,  claiming  from  downcast  hearts 
what  they  could  not  give ;  for  it  was  a  crisis  of  supreme 
danger :  farewell  tones  seemed  wailing  through  the  air ;  and 
when  the  moon  had  set  and  taken  the  still  night  away,  they 

*  Mark  xii.  24,  25. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  531 

knew  not  what  the  day  would  brinfj  forth.  Times  hke  these 
are  the  divine  confessional  for  tender  thought  and  pathetic 
aspiration  ;  but  not  for  instituting  rites,  explaining  emblems, 
and  defining  consubstantiation :  their  tragic  events  do  not 
come  on  purpose,  and  preface  their  catastrophe  by  telling 
what  they  mean.  The  "  smitten  of  God  and  afflicted"  are 
ever  "  led,  as  the  blind,  a  way  that  they  know  not :"  it  is 
only  afterwards,  on  the  retrospect  of  mysterious  sorrows,  that 
surviving  observers  find  or  fancy  what  they  are  for.  And 
then  it  comes  to  be  supposed  that  the  sufferer,  if  he  be  a 
beloved  of  God,  must  have  been  in  the  secret  too ;  and  the 
disciples'  afterthought  steals  back  into  the  Master's  words. 

The  historical  nucleus  of  the  whole  I  take  to  be  the  joint 
observance,  by  Jesus  and  his  apostles,  of  their  final  passover, 
as  the  crown  of  their  common  religious  life ;  and  his  desire 
that  their  union  should  be  unbroken  though  he  were  taken 
from  them,  and  that  in  its  renewal  from  time  to  time  the 
remembrance  of  him  should  be  its  indissoluble  bond,  as  if  his 
hand  still  brake  the  bread  and  passed  the  cup.  Here  is  no 
new  rite,  but  merely  an  assumed  continuance  of  a  community 
of  life  begun.  And  even  if  there  were,  it  would  have  to  be 
taken,  not  as  a  perpetual  vehicle  of  grace  to  mankind  for  ever, 
but  as  a  brief  usage  to  span  the  watch-hour  till  Christ  returns. 
This  the  apostle  Paul  expressly  says :  and  if  this  is  what  he 
"  received  of  the  Lord,"  it  shows  how  wide  an  interpretation 
must  be  given  to  such  expressions. 

Some  critic  has  remarked  that  the  two  views  of  Christ's 
death  (supposing  it  to  be  symbolized  by  the  sacramental 
elements),  viz.,  that  it  was  an  atonement  by  blood,  and  that 
it  was  an  antitypal  paschal  "lamb  that  was  slain,"  are  both 
due  to  the  apostle  Paul,  who  in  the  same  epistle  whence  we 
have  quoted  the  first,  announces  the  second,  in  the  words, 
"  Christ,  our  passover,  is  sacrificed  for  us  :"  so  that,  if  we 
looked  to  this  alone,  we  should  suppose  him  to  have  antici- 
pated the  fourth  gospel  in  referring  the  crucifixion  to  the 
day  of  the  passover.  "Were  it  really  so,  the  apostle  must  have 
lost  sight  of  one  of  the  doctrines,  when  giving  expression  to 
the  other  ;  for  if  the  death  of  Christ  was  an  atoning  sacrifice, 
it  could  not  have  the  paschal  lamb  for  its  type  ;  and  if  it  was 

M   31   2 


532  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  I  v. 

the  passover's  antitype,  it  could  be  no  sin-offering.  That 
annual  celebration  was  a  national  and  family  festival  to 
commemorate  the  flight  from  Egypt ;  the  lamb  that  was 
roasted  whole  and  eaten  in  haste  by  the  household  standing 
round,  was  for  the  table,  and  not  the  altar  ;  and  the  blood 
sprinkled  on  the  outer  door  posts  had  nothing  to  do  with  any 
cleansing  from  sin,  but  told  how  the  destroying  angel  was 
signalled  to  pass  on.  Whoever  had  the  fancy  to  treat  the 
death  of  Christ  as  the  ultimate  fulfilment  of  these  ideas, 
might  see  in  it  a  deliverance  from  any  bondage  not  self- 
incurred,  but  not  from  one  where  sinners  were  the  prisoners, 
and  a  borrowed  righteousness  the  freedmen's  badge.  On  the 
other  hand,  is  any  type  needed  for  the  cross,  regarded  as 
paying  the  debt  of  human  sin,  and  investing  the  transgressor 
with  another's  righteousness?  Then  certainly  nothing  can  be 
got  out  of  the  passover,  and  the  only  hope  is  to  go,  with  the 
writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  to  the  sin-off'ering  of  the 
altar,  and  the  ritual  of  the  great  day  of  atonement.  But 
the  apostle  is  not  chargeable  with  combining  these  incongru- 
ous ideas.  In  the  w^ords  "  Christ  our  passover  is  sacrificed 
for  us,"  he  doubtless  finds  something  in  the  passover  which  is 
like  sumetltinp  in  the  death  of  Christ.  What  is  this  some- 
thing ?  Is  it  any  efficacy  in  atoning  for  sin  ?  Not  in  the 
least.  It  is  simply  that  each  is  the  initial  term  of  a  festival 
or  season  under  special  vows  of  blamelessness  and  j)urity ; 
the  paschal  day  emptying  every  house  of  leaven  (the  emblem 
of  uncleanness),  and  opening  a  week  permitting  only  un- 
leavened bread  :  and  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  cross  inaugu- 
rating a  new  life  for  the  disciple  into  which  nothing  that  is 
impure  can  be  allowed  to  enter.  No  more  is  meant  than  that, 
for  the  Christian  Church  the  time  was  come  to  fling  the 
heathen  laxities  away,  and  live  within  the  bounds  of  sanctity 
and  truth. 

In  its  origin  and  central  idea, — the  remembrance  of  Jesus, — 
the  Lord's  supper  was  necessarily  limited  to  those  whom  he 
had  made  his  personal  associates.  They  alone  who  had  known 
him  could  "remember  "  him  :  those  only  who  were  drawn  to 
him  by  living  contact,  as  hearers  of  his  word  and  witnesses  of 
his  grace  and  truth,  were  deemed  and  called  disciples:  and. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNION   WITH  GOD.  533 

often  the  word  was  distinctively  confined  to  the  constant 
assistants  of  his  ministry.  It  marked  off  their  relation  to 
him,  as  that  of  learner  to  teacher,  and  implied  docility  in 
them  and  access  to  him  for  solution  of  their  questions.  This 
was  the  common  bond  which  held  them  together  around  him 
as  their  Master  ;  they  went  where  he  went,  and  stayed  where 
he  stayed,  except  when  he  sent  them  forth  on  brief  missions 
to  prepare  his  way  or  multiply  his  word.  They  thus  grew 
together  into  a  social  and  sacred  guild,  with  the  rules  and 
habits  of  a  brotherhood.  A  common  purse  provided  for  their 
daily  wants  and  daily  charities.  At  the  resting-places  of 
their  journey,  whether  on  the  grass,  or  by  the  lake,  or  within 
the  house,  they  gathered  together  round  their  simple  meal, 
dealt  out  by  Jesus  as  their  presiding  head,  with  giving  of 
thanks  for  refreshment  of  body  and  quickening  of  the  soul. 
And  of  such  habitual  icAaVfc  tou  aorou  the  assemblage  round 
the  passover  table  was  but  an  example,  specialized  by  the 
anniversary  and  the  sorrowful  tension  in  the  hearts  of  all. 
It  is  evident  that  this  habitual  social  union,  tinged  with  freer 
and  deeper  converse  than  in  the  formal  Jewish  "  use  and 
wont,"  was  felt  to  be  an  endearing  and  binding  feature  in 
their  blended  life,  and  some  nameless  grace  in  the  personality 
of  Jesus  invested  it  with  a  sacred  charm.  It  drew  the  atten- 
tion of  disaffected  observers,  and  raised  questions  about  the 
manners  of  the  group  and  their  leader  :  '  Why  he  came  eat- 
ing and  drinking,  and  with  a  company  of  associates,  instead 
of  living  on  locusts  and  wild  honey  like  the  solitary  of  the 
desert  ?  '*  '  Why  his  disciples  dispensed  with  the  Pharisaic 
rules  of  ablution  before  eating'?'!  It  deepened  the  claim 
upon  the  fidelity  of  each  that  he  had  his  place  at  the  common 
table;  and  was  the  most  piercing  reproach  to  Judas,  "He 
that  eateth  my  l)read  lifted  up  his  heel  against  me."  I 

When  the  members  of  this  fraternity,  dispersed  from 
Calvary,  were  reunited  at  Jerusalem  under  the  eye  of  their 
Master  in  heaven,  and  in  the  faith  of  his  early  return,  nothing 
could  be  more  natural  than  that  they  should  resume  the  order 
of  life  so  recently  suspended ;  and  that,  in  recurring  to  that 
"  breaking  of  bread  "  together,  they  should  dwell  with  an 
*  Matt.  xi.  18,  19.  t  Mark  vii.  2,  5.  J  John  xiii.  18. 


534  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

intense  stress  upon  the  last  evening,  when  so  perplexing  a 
sorrow  had  filled  their  hearts.  As  they  were  no  longer  a 
wandering  mission,  but  stationary  in  the  holy  city,  the  new 
members  who  were  added  to  them  from  the  residents  there 
fell  into  their  usages,  and,  as  belonging  to  their  "  household 
of  faith,"  were  welcomed  to  the  disciples'  gathering  at  what 
was  now  regarded  as  the  table  of  the  Lord.  The  swelling 
numbers  soon  outgrowing  the  limits  of  a  room,  similar  centres 
of  brotherhood  sj)rang  up  in  various  parts  of  the  city,  all  on 
the  same  principle,  and  repeating  the  same  type,  of  religious 
equality  :  "  day  by  day  continuing  steadfastly  with  one  accord 
in  the  temple,  and  breaking  bread  at  home,  they  did  take  their 
food  with  gladness  and  singleness  of  heart,  praising  God  and 
having  favour  with  all  the  people."*  The  still  increasing 
multitude  exceeding  ere  long  the  capacity  of  private  houses, 
and  requiring  larger  organization,  places  of  meeting  were 
found  for  the  £KKXr;ata,  to  which  the  members  repaired,  not  for 
worship  only,  but  for  offices  of  the  common  table  {KoivogcioTog). 
When  and  how  this  took  place  in  Jerusalem  is  unknown  ; 
but  the  Apostle  Paul  describes  a  painful  example  at  Corinth 
of  "  coming  together  in  the  church  not  for  the  better,  but  for 
the  worse,"  "  to  eat  the  Lord's  supper. "f  From  this  we  learn 
that  the  provisions  spread  for  the  equal  use  of  all,  and  in 
express  recognition  of  their  brotherhood  as  children  of  God, 
are  snatched  at  by  the  first  comers,  and  abused  to  purposes 
of  greed  and  excess,  so  that  "  one  has  to  go  away  hungry, 
while  another  gets  drunk;"  and  thus  the  festival  of  mutual 
affection  (the  aydTrr])  is  turned  into  a  mess  of  scrambling 
appetite  and  discontent ;  and  the  eucharistic  distributed  bread 
with  the  sequel  of  the  communion  cup,|  whereby  the  spirit  of 
Christ  had  consecrated  the  whole,  is  dropped  out  with  insult. 
To  a  community  gathered  from  the  Gentiles,  more  familiar 
with  the  Pagan  sacrificial  feasts  than  with  the  Jewish  pass- 
over  and  its  significance  for  the  twelve,  the  remembrance  of 
Jesus  on  that  paschal  night  did  not  strongly  appeal ;  and  they 

*  Acts  ii.  46.  t  1  Cor.  xi.  17,  20-22. 

t  I  call  it  '^sequel  "  because  the  apostle  gives  this  as  the  order  which  he 
had  prescribed  to  the  Corinthians  ("  the  cup  also  after  supper  ") ;  but  it  is 
doubtful  wliether  the  communion  rite  was  usually  severed  from  the  Agape 
till  the  second  century. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNION   WITH  GOD.  535 

let  the  religious  appendix  to  the  act  of  fellowship  fall  through  ; 
and,  once  bereft  of  its  spirit,  abused  its  elements  to  the  rum 
and  reversal  of  even  the  social  influence  connected  with  it. 

"With  the  constant  influx  into  the  Church  of  new  members 
who  believed  onlj-  on  the  word  of  others,  and  who  waited  for 
a  Christ  in  the  future  rather  than  looked  on  him  in  the  past, 
the  number  of  those  who  could  "remember"  him  became 
ever  smaller  ;  with  this  inevitable  effect :  that,  of  the  two 
relations  consecrated  at  the  last  supper,  viz.,  that  of  personal 
discipleship  to  him  as  Head,  and  that  of  collateral  love  of 
each  to  all  as  brethren,  the  latter  gained  upon  the  former, 
as  the  living  and  immediate  ever  must  upon  the  ideal  and 
remote.  The  change  is  marked  by  the  fact  that  the  term 
"disciples"  disappears,  as  the  exclusive  right  of  the  personal 
followers  of  Jesus,  and  that  the  new  Christians  are  habitually 
called  "brethren."  The  prominence  of  this  relation  threw 
the  Agape  with  its  common  table  to  the  front  of  the  apos- 
tolic institution,  especially  in  Jerusalem,  where  a  large  number 
of  indigent  converts  depended  upon  it  for  dail,y  sustenance, 
and  made  it  not  merely  an  expressive  symbol  of  fraternal 
fellowship,  but  a  material  necessity.  The  expression  in  the 
book  of  Acts,  that  they  had  "  all  things  in  common,"  cer- 
tainly says  too  much  if  understood  to  denote,  in  the  modern 
sense,  absolute  "  communit}-  of  goods."  For  in  this  case 
there  could  have  been  no  class  of  "poor"  ;  yet  the  one  con- 
dition on  which  the  Jerusalem  Apostles  agreed  to  recognize 
the  Gentile  ministry  of  Paul  was,  that  he  should  levy  con- 
tributions from  his  Church  for  the  Jerusalem  poor.*  Indeed 
the  historian  himself  qualifies  his  own  phrase  b}'  adding  that 
when  possessions  were  sold  by  the  owner  for  the  common 
good,  the  proceeds  were  available  for  the  relief  of  each 
"  according  to  Ids  need."  He  also  tells  us  of  complaints  on 
behalf  of  the  widows  of  the  Greek  Jews,  respecting  favour- 
itism shown  towards  the  Hebrew  widows  in  the  daily  minis- 
tration of  alms.f  These  are  symptoms,  not  of  communism, 
but  only  of  a  large  and  permanent  poor's  fund,  out  of  which 
allowances  were  apportioned  by  official  almoners.  The  recog- 
nition of  brotherhood  was  concentrated  in  the  Sunday  Agape  ; 

'■■  Gal.  ii.  10.  t  Acts  vi.  1. 


536  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

the  more  appropriately  as  that  was  the  usual  occasion  for  the 
presentation  of  gifts  to  the  common  fund  at  the  disposal  of 
the  deacons,  or  to  other  requirements  of  the  Church. 

We  are  indebted  to  Briennius's  important  discovery  of  the 
"  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles  "  for  an  actual  model  of 
the  Communion  Service  as  it  was  administered,  probably,  m 
the  early  part  of  the  second  century.     It  is  as  follows  :  "  As 
regards  the  Eucharist,  give  thanks  after  this  manner :  first, 
for  the  cup:  'We  give  thanks  to  thee,  our  Father,  for  the 
holy  vine  of  David,  thy  servant,  which  thou  hast  made  known 
to  us  through  Jesus,  thy  servant :  to  thee  be  glory  for  ever.' 
And  for  the  broken  bread:    'We  give  thanks  to  thee,  our 
Father,  for  the  life  and  knowledge  which  thou  hast  made  known 
to  us  through  Jesus,  thy  servant :  to  thee  be  glory  for  ever. 
As  this  broken  bread  was  scattered  upon  the  mountains  and 
gathered  together  became  one,  so  let  thy  Church  be  gathered 
together  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  into  thy  kingdom:  for 
thine  is  the  glory  and  the  power  through  Jesus  Christ  for 
ever.'*    Now  after  being  filled,  give  thanks  after  this  manner  : 
*  We  thank  thee,  holy  Father,  for  thy  holy  name,  which  thou 
hast  caused  to  dwell  in  our  hearts,  and  for  the  knowledge  and 
faith  and  immortality  which  thou  hast  made  known  to  us 
through  Jesus,  thy  servant :  to  thee  be  glory  for  ever.     Thou, 
O  almighty  Sovereign,  didst  make  all  things  for  thy  name's 
sake :  thou  gavest  food  and  drink  to  men  for  enjoyment,  that 
they  might  give  thanks  to  thee  :  but  to  us  thou  didst  freely 
give  spiritual  food  and  drink  and  eternal  life  through  thy 
servant.     Before  all  things  we  give  thanks  to  thee  that  thou 
art  mighty  :  to  thee  be  glory  for  ever.     Piemember,  0  Lord, 
thy  Church,  to  deliver  her  from  evil  and  to  perfect  her  in  thy 
love  :  and  gather  her  together  from  the  four  winds,  sanctified 
for  thy  kingdom  which  thou  didst  prepare  for  her  :  for  thine 
is  the  power  and  the  glory  for  ever.'  "f     "  And  on  the  Lord's 
day  come  together,  and  break  bread,  and  give  thanks,  having 
before  confessed  your  transgressions,  that  your  sacrifice  may 
be  pure.     Let  no  one  who  has  a  dispute  with  his  fellow  come 

*  Ch.  ix.  1-4.     See  SchafE's  oldest  Church  Manual,  called  the  Teaching  of 
the  Twelve  Apostles.     Edinb.  1887.     P.  190. 
t  Ibid.  ch.  X.  1-5,  p.  101. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UXION    WITH  GOD.  537 

together  ^Yith  you  until  they  are  reconciled,  that  j'our  sacrifice 
may  not  be  defiled.  For  this  is  that  which  was  spoken  by 
the  Lord  :  In  every  place  and  time  offer  me  a  pure  sacrifice  : 
for  I  am  a  great  King,  saith  the  Lord,  and  my  name  is  won- 
derful among  the  Gentiles."* 

This  sample  of  the  regular  Church  ministration  of  the  chief 
"  sacrament,"  from  a  date  about  as  early  as  the  book  of  Acts, 
is  full  of  interest  and  instruction  ;  especially  on  the  following 
points  : — 

I.  The  Order  of  administration  has  some  unexpected 
features. 

1.  The  Cii^i,  with  a  preluding  prayer. 

2.  The  Bread,  with  corresponding  introductory  prayer. 

3.  The  "  being  filled,"  i.e.,  consuming  the  provision  of  the 
Agape  together. 

4.  The  closing  thanksgi\'ing  prayer. 

The  confession  of  sins,  which  is  conjoined  with  the  discharge 
of  alienations  from  the  heart,  as  a  condition  of  acceptable 
participation,  may  be  understood,  like  the  reconciliation,  as 
a  private  act  of  penitence  :  or,  as  a  collective  acknowledg- 
ment by  the  whole  congregation  through  the  voice  of  public 
praj'er.  A  similar  injunction  occurs  in  an  earlier  chapter, 
addressed  to  the  individual  catechumen,  rather  than  to  the 
body  of  communicants :  "In  the  congregation  thou  shalt 
confess  thy  transgressions,  and  thou  shalt  not  come  to  thy 
prayer  with  an  evil  conscience."!  I  think,  with  Professor 
Schaff,  that  this  probably  refers  to  open  confession  to  one's 
fellows  of  wrong-doing,  being  equivalent  to  the  exhortation 
in  James  v.  16,  "  confess  your  sins  one  to  another."  In  any 
case,  the  confession  is  to  be  prior  to  the  service,  and  not  a 
part  of  it. 

It  is  clear  that  in  the  foregoing  order  there  is  no  separation 
of  the  Communion  from  the  Agape.  They  are  absolutely 
identified  ;  the  social  meal  consisting  of  the  very  ttotvioiov 
and  aoTOQ  rilg  evxapiariag  which  have  been  introduced  by  the 
first  and  second  prayer,  and  having  for  its  contents  the  bless- 
ing acknowledged  in  the  third.     This  feature  forbids  us,  I 

*  Schaff's  oldest  Church  :\Iauual,  ch.  xiv.  p.  203.  t  Ilii<i-  iv.  14. 


538  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

should  say,  to  seek  for  the  date  of  the  StSayfj  much  later  than 
the  close  of  the  first  century. 

II.  The  contents  of  the  three  prayers  present  some  point? 
of  mterest. 

1.  With  regard  to  what  we  do  not  find  there,  it  is  surely  re- 
markable that  there  is  no  allusion  to  the  last  summer  which  the 
service  is  held  to  commemorate  :  no  reference  to  the  death  of 
Christ;  and  therefore  none  to  its  alleged  effects,  viz.,  atone- 
ment,  neiv  covenant,  remission  of  sins. 

2.  The  iMsitive  enumeration  of  divine  gifts  does  not  modify 
the  impression  of  these  omissions.  The  first  prayer  gives 
thanks  for  "the  holy  Vine  of  thy  servant  David,"  i.e.,  in 
evident  allusion  to  Psalm  Ixxx.,  the  Church  as  the  "  Israel  of 
God,"  "  the  Vine  which  his  right  hand  had  planted  "  ;  *  the 
institution  of  a  holy  Society. 

The  second  prayer  gives  thanks  for  "  the  life  and  knowledge 
revealed  through  Jesus,  thy  servant," — a  communication  of 
divine  truth. 

The  third  prayer  gives  thanks  to  God  for  planting  in  the 
heart  an  apprehension  of  his  name,  i.e.,  his  nature  ;  and  giving 
through  Jesus  the  light  of  ''hnowledge,  faith,  and  immortality"  ; 
and  (in  reference  to  the  bread  and  wine  on  the  table)  for  the 
supplies  of  food  and  drink  adequate  to  both  naturcd  ivants  and 
sjnritual  life. 

3.  The  interpretation  given  to  the  symbols  in  the  Eucharist 
is  not  what  a  sacramentarian  would  expect. 

The  Bread,  made  up  of  a  multitude  of  corn  seeds  combined 
into  one  substance,  stands  for  the  unity  of  the  Church,  com- 
posed of  countless  members ;  and  this,  without  the  slightest 
allusion  to  the  "  body  "  of  Christ,  as  represented  by  the  visible 
Christendom. 

The  Wine  is  taken  to  mean  no  more  than  spiritual  drink, 
the  influences  which  nurture  and  strengthen  faith  and  love. 

4.  The  title  given  throughout  to  Jesus  (roJ  Trai^og  aov),  with- 
out even  the  addition  of  Christ,  and  identical  with  that  which 

*  John  XV.  1.  "I  am  the  true  vine  "  tempts  some  interpreters  to  under- 
stand the  image  as  referring  to  Clirist  himself :  but  the  next  words  in  tlie 
text,  "wliich  thou  hast  made  knoivn  through  Jesus  Christ,"  distinguish  Christ 
from  the  vine.     The  idea  is,  that  the  Church  is  the  true  Israel. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNION  WITH  GOD.  539 

is  given  to  David,  is  remarkable  in  a  service  supposed  to  draw 
its  whole  meaning  from  the  Incarnation,  and  to  depend  on  the 
humanity,  only  as  assumed  by  the  divinity  of  Christ.  No 
modern  celebrant  could  use  such  language  without  incurring 
the  charge  of  profaning  the  sacrament. 

5.  Throughout  the  prayers  there  is  but  one  i^ctxtion :  viz., 
that  the  Church  may  be  perfected  in  union  and  sanctity.  All 
else  is  pure  thanksgiving ;  the  pervading  presence  of  which 
has  fixed  upon  the  service  the  name  of  Eudiarist.  In  tins 
character  it  is  that  it  is  called  "a  sacrifice"  {^vma)  ;  inas- 
much as  it  was  essentially,  not  a  supplication  for  something 
from  God,  but  an  ojf'crintj  of  something  to  God ;  in  which  alone 
consisted,  in  the  eyes  of  both  heathens  and  Jews,  the  whole 
business  of  a  temple  service  ;  and  without  which  the  Christians 
presented  to  them  the  appearance  of  a  godless  race.  No  in- 
cense !  no  altar  !  no  fire  of  sacrifice,  sending  its  message  aloft 
to  placate  an  offended  Deity  !  How  did  such  a  people  hope 
for  the  favour  of  a  Heaven  of  which  they  took  no  notice  ?  The 
answer  to  such  imputations  had  already  been  supplied  by  the 
prophets  and  perfected  by  Christ :  the  silent  devotions  of  the 
private  heart,  the  choral  fervour  of  a  thankful  multitude,  were 
ofierings  rarer  in  the  giving  and  more  welcome  in  the  receiving 
than  the  smoke  of  censers  and  the  gold  of  temple  gifts.  This 
was  the  "  Christian's  sacrifice,"  not  unaccompanied  by  the  free 
tribute  which,  on  the  first  dav  of  the  week,  he  had  readv  to 
throw  into  the  Church  treasury  for  the  aid  of  the  poorer 
brethren's  need.  In  thus  handing  over  the  word  ^vg'iu  from 
priestly  to  prophetic  use,  the  Christian  apologists,  desiring  to 
free  it  from  clinging  ideas  of  the  altar  and  the  knife,  often 
added  to  it  the  epithet  "spiritual"  (irvtvpLUTiKn) : — an  inno- 
cent combination  to  mark  that  the  oft'ering  from  man  to  God 
was  simply  an  inward  act  of  the  soul.  But  in  such  attempts 
to  elevate  a  lower  term  by  the  lift  of  an  epithet,  it  is  a  question 
whether  the  higher  will  hold  up  the  inferior,  or  the  inferior 
will  drag  down  the  higher.  And  from  following  the  example 
of  this  heterogeneous  combination,  some  mischievous  turns 
have  been  given  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Communion.  As  a 
TTvivfxaTiKi]  ^v<Tia,  the  service  is  an  offering  to  God  from  the 
spirit  of  man,  and  plainly  consists  in  the  prayer  alone,  as  the 


540  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

sole  medium  of  possible  communion  with  him.  But  when  the 
epithet  takes  possession  of  the  bread,  the  7n'£U(uar<icr/  rporpri 
must  be  taken  in  the  inverse  order,  as  the  gift  of  God  to  man  : 
if  TrvEUjuartKjj  be  understood  of  the  human  spirit,  a  gift  which 
nurtures  the  inward  life  of  the  natural  soul :  if  of  the  Divine 
spirit,  a  gift  which  imparts  a  supernatural  grace.  In  the 
Didache,  the  phrase  occurs  in  the  former  of  these  two  mean- 
ings, and  simply  includes  the  Christian  faith  and  knowledge 
symbolized  by  the  bread  among  the  gifts  of  God  for  which 
thanks  are  our  only  possible  offering  in  response.  But  too 
easily  and  too  soon  the  expression,  with  others  like  it,  slipped 
into  the  second  of  the  meanings,  and  so  brought  into  existence 
the  sacramental  idea,  the  development  of  which  carried 
Christendom  away  to  the  furthest  possible  point  from  the 
religion  of  its  founder.  When  once  it  is  assumed  that,  apart 
from  the  personal  life  of  the  communicant's  soul,  the  material 
elements  themselves  are  made  the  media  of  supernatural  grace, 
they  become  sacred  objects,  bringing  an  incarnation  down  to 
things  without  a  soul,  and  are  invested  with  imaginary  powers 
to  heal  or  harm. 

The  separation  of  the  Communion  from  the  Agape  tended 
to  this  result.  So  long  as  the  assembled  brethren  ate  the 
bread  and  drank  the  wine  as  parts  of  a  real  meal,  their  per- 
ceptible qualities,  however  touched  with  an  ideal  meaning, 
asserted  themselves  too  strongly  to  admit  of  their  becoming 
hiding-places  of  divine  mysteries.  But  when  disconnected 
from  all  natural  use,  and  isolated  with  their  symbolized  con- 
tents, the  elements  compel  the  participant  to  concentrate  his 
mind  upon  these  at  a  moment  when  he  has  nothing  else  to  do, 
and  to  make  the  very  most  of  them  by  an  intense  strain  of 
thought  and  feeling.  And  where  Nature  has  no  place,  and 
Grace  claims  all,  the  equilibrium  is  lost  which  bars  the 
entrance  of  superstition.  The  history  of  the  Church  is 
certainly  in  accordance  with  this  view.  With  the  enlarge- 
ment of  its  boundaries,  the  semi-communistic  feeling  of  the 
first  age  wore  away,  the  differences  of  social  station  made 
themselves  felt,  and  the  fraternal  supper  became  rarer,  and 
at  last  was  dropped  :  the  memorial  distribution  of  the  bread 
and  wine  being  alone  preserved,  and  erected  into  an  indepen- 


Chap.  IV.]  THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  541 

dent  rite.  It  ^Yas  a  gradual  change,  stealing  on  from  place  to 
place :  but  by  the  end  of  the  second  centuiy  was  apparently 
pretty  complete.  From  that  time  the  degeneration  of  the 
Eucharist  from  a  Thanksgiving  to  a  Sacrament,  and  even  an 
"  unbloody  sacrifice,"  was  rapid  ;  taking  however,  only  with 
accelerated  speed,  a  direction  not  untraced  in  the  first  age, 
and  even  marked  for  a  few  steps  by  the  apostle  Paul  himself. 
The  belief  which  apparently  he  at  first  entertained,  that 
discipleship  to  Christ  was  a  security  against  death,  seems  to 
have  connected  itself  in  his  thought  with  the  emblems  of  the 
sacrifice  on  Calvary,  of  which  the  communicants  partook  ;  as 
if  the  bread  and  wine,  when  taken  as  the  virtual  (glorified) 
body  of  the  Eedeemer,  were  literally  what  Ignatius  calls  them, 
"  the  antidote  of  death,"  "  the  medicament  of  immortality,"* 
and  had  a  mystical  antiseptic  influence,  beginning  the  assimi- 
lation of  the  disciple's  person  to  that  of  his  risen  Lord.  "With- 
out positively  asserting  for  the  elements  this  efficacy  as  a 
charm  against  natural  decay,  he  negatively  implies  it,  l)y 
attributing  the  sicknesses  and  death  which  have  cast  a  shade 
over  the  Corinthian  Church  to  their  failure  of  right  participa- 
tion in  the  communion  :  "  for  this  cause,"  he  says,  "  many  are 
weak  and  sickly  among  you,  and  many  sleep  :"  "for  he  that 
eateth  and  drinketh  eateth  and  drinketh  judgment  unto  him- 
self, if  he  discern  not  the  body."t  By  missing  the  real  virtue 
of  the  rite,  and  taking  nothing  but  common  bread  and  wine, 
they  fail  to  appropriate  the  benefits  of  Christ's  death  for 
them,  and  remain  liable  to  the  lot  of  his  physical  nature, — \ 
involved  in  his  death,  instead  of  delivered  by  it.  If  the 
apostle  had  previously  encouraged  the  expectation  in  others 
which  he  avowed  for  himself,  of  living  into  the  kingdom  of 
God  without  passing  through  the  mortal  transition,  he  would 
naturally  be  thus  driven  upon  moral  causes,  in  order  to  explain 
as  special  exceptions  the  drooping  and  failing  lives  which  the 
disappointed  Corinthians  had  to  report. 

Not  less  strongly  marked  is  this  eucharistic  belief  in  the 
fourth   Gospel :    but  with  a  difference   necessitated    by  the 

'■'■'    (fidpfiOKov  I'davacrias,  airiSoToy  tov  y.r  airo6ava.v.      Ad.  Ephes.  XX.  2. 

t  1  Cor.  xi.  2'J,  30. 

+  Kot  "  guilty  of  the  body  and  blood  of  the  Lord." 


542  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

evangelist's  peculiar  Christology.  As  in  his  history  of  the 
passion-week  there  is  no  paschal  supper  with  the  disciples, 
no  institution  or  model  of  a  communion  rite,  there  would  not 
seem  to  be  room  for  any  doctrine  respecting  a  memorial 
service  which  is  without  original.  And  as  a  commemoration 
he  never  directly  mentions  it,  much  less  interprets  it.  But 
when  he  wrote,  he  found  the  usage  universal  in  the  Church, 
as  an  integral  function  of  its  life  ;  and  it  was  indispensable  to 
provide  it  with  a  meaning  in  harmony  with  the  characteristic 
thought  of  his  Gospel.  This  he  indirectly  does  in  the  strange 
and  startling  discourse  said  to  have  been  pronounced  by  Jesus 
in  the  synagogue  at  Capernaum  :*  for  when  the  evangelist 
makes  Jesus  insist  on  the  conditions  of  eternal  life  under  the 
image  of  "  eating  his  flesh  and  drinking  his  blood,"  he  un- 
doubtedly had  in  view  the  elements  of  the  Communion.  "  He 
that  eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood  hath  eternal  life  :" 
*'  my  flesh  is  meat  indeed,  and  my  blood  is  drink  indeed  :  he 
that  eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood  abideth  in  me, 
and  I  in  him.  As  the  living  Father  sent  me,  and  I  live 
because  of  the  Father,  so  he  that  eateth  me  shall  also  live 
because  of  me.  This  is  the  bread  which  came  down  from 
heaven. "t  This  is  virtually  to  say,  '  He  who  realizes  the 
meaning  and  contents  of  the  Communion  rite,  and  draws  the 
aliment  of  his  spirit  from  me,  shall  live  as  I  live.'  But  when  you 
ask  '  What  then  is  the  meaning  of  the  Communion  rite  ?  '  you 
find  that  it  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  death  on  the 
cross,  and  w^ould  be  there  just  the  same  if,  instead  of  dying, 
Christ  had  been  visibly  divested  of  his  humanity,  and  restored 
to  the  "bosom  of  the  Father"  by  some  living  change.  The 
"  bread  "  does  not  mean  "  the  body  which  is  broken  for  you," 
but  the  body  which  is  assumed  for  you  :  and  the  wine  does  not 
mean  "the  blood"  which  is  ''shed  for  you,"  but  that  which 
has  throhhcd  and  glowed  for  you,  and  passed  to  you  w'ith 
answering  flush,  as  the  life  that  kindles  your  life.  It  is  the 
whole  episode  of  the  Incarnation,  and  not  its  catastrophe  in 
the  Crucifixion,  that  is  represented  in  these  symbols.  "  I  am 
the  living  bread  that  came  down  from  heaven,"  "  the  bread  of 
God  which  giveth  life  unto  the  world:  "   "  your  fathers  did  eat 

John  vi.  22-65.  f  Ibid.  54-57. 


Clir.p.  IV. J         THEORIES   OF   UNION   WITH  GOD.  543 

manna  in  the  wilderness,  and  they  died :"  "  Moses  did  not 
give  you  bread  out  of  heaven  :  but  my  Father  giveth  you  the 
true  bread  out  of  heaven."  It  is  the  Divine  "  Word  "  that  is 
thus  *'  sent  out  of  heaven,"  and  "  made  flesh  "  for  the  spiritual 
nurture  of  mankind  :  when  it  is  said  that  they  have  access  to 
this  bread  by  Christ  "  giving  his  flesh  for  the  life  of  the 
world,"  the  reference  is,  not  to  the  flesh  of  his  death,  l)ut  to 
the  flesh  of  his  living  humanity,  which  brings  him  into  contact 
with  men  and  enables  him  to  speak  to  them  "the  word  of 
God."  This,  at  least,  is  the  interpretation  which  is  added,  as 
from  himself,  of  his  own  "hard  sa^'ing:"  "does  this  cause 
j'ou  to  stumble  ?  What  then  if  ye  should  see  the  Son  of  Man 
ascending  where  he  was  before  ?  It  is  the  sjnrit  that  quick- 
eneth  :  tJie  Jiesli  profiteth  nothing :  the  words  that  I  have 
spoken  unto  you,  they  are  spirit,  they  are  life." 

In  accordance  then  with  the  dominant  thought  of  the 
whole  gospel,  the  Communion  rite,  like  the  Paraclete,  is  the 
virtual  prolongation  of  Christ's  presence  with  his  disciples, 
the  former  sustaining  the  renewing  and  sanctifying  power 
of  his  Divine  humanity :  the  latter,  imparting  light  and 
faculty  to  solve  for  themselves  problems  they  would  once  have 
referred  to  him.  The  stress  which  the  evangelist  lays  on  the 
symbolic  acts  of  eating  and  drinking  the  media  of  this 
influence,  must  certainly  be  taken  to  imply  the  conception  of 
a  mystic  efficacy  in  them  transcending  their  natural  range  of 
operation,  and  lifting  them  into  indispensable  means  of  grace. 
The  communicant  is  drawn  by  a  secret  process  into  a  nearer 
assimilation  to  the  Person  of  the  incarnate  Logos,  who  has 
"  life  in  himself,"  and  imparts  it  to  all  who  are  his.  He  is 
the  centre  and  sole  appointed  supply  of  eternal  life  to  men  :  as 
the  bread  that  came  down  from  heaven  he  renders  imperish- 
able all  who  take  it.  But,  in  order  to  belong  to  him  and  be 
reserved  for  everlasting  life,  it  is  indispensable  for  the  disciples 
to  eat  his  flesh  and  drink  his  blood :  for,  in  the  elements  of 
the  Communion,  they  partake  of  no  common  food, — no  bread 
that  perishes  and  lets  perish, — but  a  divine  manna,  a  tran- 
scendent elixir,  of  which  "  he  that  tastes  shall  live  for  ever"  : 
he  hath  Christ  abiding  in  him,  and  so  he  shall  abide  in 
Christ,  and  be  secure  of  being  raised  to  eternal  life.     Whilst 


544  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

the  Son  of  God  remains  on  earth,  the  principle  of  immortality 
is  shut  up  and  concentrated  in  his  human  personality.  He 
lays  down  his  human  life  in  order  to  set  free  its  Divine  and  sanc- 
tifying power  for  unlimited  expansion  ;  that  it  may  become  life  to 
the  world,  and  from  a  finite  presence  maj^  break  into  indefinite 
regeneration.  The  eucharistic  elements  are  the  medium  of  its 
distribution  and  appropriation,  drawing  together  and  constitut- 
ing the  family  of  immortals.  Without  partaking,  no  immortality. 
Here  then,  within  the  scriptures  themselves,  unless  we  are 
to  reduce  them  to  the  insipid  emptiness  of  a  rationalist 
interpretation,  we  have  the  well-defined  germ  of  a  truly 
sacramental  doctrine.  And  after  this,  the  gradual  construc- 
tion of  a  complete  sacerdotal  sj^stem  was  only  a  question  of 
time.  Since  the  mystical  efficacy  of  the  elements  certainly 
did  not  belong  to  them  as  they  came  from  the  bakehouse  and 
wine-vat,  it  was  supposed  to  be  brought  into  them  by  the 
prayer  of  consecration :  and  then  the  defining  fancy  of  men 
began  to  press  the  question  wherein  consisted  so  marvellous  a 
change.  As  early  as  Justin  Martyr  an  answer  is  given, 
which  seems  indistinguishaljle  from  the  doctrine  of  con- 
substantiation :  he  says,  "We  take  these  elements  not  as 
common  bread  and  common  drink  :  but  have  been  taught  that 
just  as  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  when  incarnated  by  the 
Word  of  God,  took  our  flesh  and  blood  for  our  salvation,  so 
on  being  blessed  by  the  prayer  of  his  word,  the  food  which  is 
converted  into  nutriment  of  our  flesh  and  blood,  is  also  the 
flesh  and  blood  of  that  incarnated  Jesus."*  Irena3us  gives  a 
somewhat  different  reply  ;  suggesting  that  the  divine  Logos 
that  assumed  humanity  in  the  person  of  Jesus  enters  the 
elements  in  the  Communion  and  conveys  into  them  their 
supernatural  powers  ;  repeating  in  fact  the  miracle  of  the 
incarnation.  This,  however,  seemed  to  put  the  wrong  con- 
stituent of  Christ's  person  into  the  bread  and  wine,  viz.:  the 
sjnritual  and  j^^'e existent  Logos,  instead  of  the  flesh  and  blood,. 
which  are  affirmed  to  be  there,  and  of  whose  mode  of  presence 
an  account  is  needed.  In  the  attempt  to  amend  this  answer, 
a  millennium  and  a  half  of  so-called  "developments  of 
doctrine"  into  better  defined  but  more  astounding  superstition 

*  Apol.  i.  66. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  COD.  545 

was   entered   upon,    and   disturbs   us  with    its  ferment  still. 
The  very  problem  discussed  invested  the  bread  and  wine,  as 
soon  as  the  prayer  was  said,  with  properties  unknown  and 
awful,  to  which  were  attributed  all    sorts  of  magical  effects. 
Tertnllian,   for   example,   remarks:  "We   scrupulously  guard 
against  any  drop  of  wine   or  cruml)  of  bread  falling  to  the 
ground."*     In  the  third  century,  the  administration  of  the 
sacrament  to  infants  shows   how  completely  it   had   passed 
into  a  consecrated  charm.     And  a  little  later  the  confusion 
was  completed  by  its  habitual   use  as  a  viaticum   morth,  irre- 
spective of  any  spiritual  participation  by  the  dj-ing  subject. 
Whether  it  was  the  earthly  or  the  heavenly  body  of  Christ 
which  was    in   the   elements   at    the    Communion   remained 
for  ages  undetermined.     In  the  ninth  century  a  great  ecclesi- 
astic maintained  in  a  treatise,  presented  to  Charles  the  Bold, 
that  the  very  body  which  had  been  born  of  ]\Iary  was  reborn 
of  the  bread  and  wine  upon  the  altar,  and  sometimes  in  the 
visible  form  of  a  lamb,  or  of  a  boy,  wdth  real  flesh  and  blood. 
When,  two  centuries  later,  the  word  Transubstantiation  was 
introduced,  it  brought  with  it  new,  if  not  grosser,  trivialities  : 
and   Pope  Innocent   III.    scrupulously   defends    the   doctrine 
against  the  objection  that,  if  the  substance  is  transformed,  and 
what  was  bread  is  bread  no  more,  the  mice  may  eat  the  body 
of  Christ.      Consequences  like  these    drove  Luther  and  the 
Anglicans  to  their  modified  conception,  that  the  Ileal  Presence 
in  the  elements  of  Christ's  person  need  not  involve  any  real 
absence  of  the  bread  and  wine  in  their  physical  qualities ;  and 
that  these  may  still  speak  to  the  senses  while  the  others  apply 
themselves  mystically  to  the  soul.     The  superstition  is  more 
decent,  but  the  miracle  and  its  spiritual  mischief  remain.     You 
cannot  have  a  supernatural  institution  without  o, iKrpetual priest  : 
nor  a  perpetual  Priest  without  a  hopeless   blight  upon  the 
freedom  and  the  power  of  the  human  soul.     Embodied  sanc- 
tities, enclosed  in  given  material  objects,  and  released   from 
dependence  on  the  living  love  and  moving  conscience  of  man- 
kind, can  never  be  anything  but  magic  spells  and  charms  : 
enslaving  men  with  false  reverence,  while  the  delusion  lasts : 
and  when  it  breaks,  delivering  them  into  a  rude  irreverence, 

•  De  corona,  III. 

N    N 


S45  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

not  truer  in  itself,  but  more  transient  in  its  duration.  The 
only  centre  of  repose,  remote  alike  from  both,  lies  in  the  pure 
and  direct  relation  between  each  naked  soul  and  God. 

§  2.  Future  Croiim  of  Life. 

If  there  is  any  part  of  the  work  of  Christ  which  is  owned 
alike  by  the  disciple  and  by  the  mere  observer  of  his  religion, 
it  is  the  profound  impression  he  has  produced  of  human 
immortality.  The  fact  is  undisputed,  that  Christendom 
throughout,  and  most  intensely  in  its  most  characteristic 
23eriods,  has  carried  its  chief  allegiance  beyond  the  immediate 
scene  to  "  another  country,  even  a  heavenly  ;"  for  it  is  the 
ground  not  less  of  complaint  from  the  opponents  of  Christianity, 
than  of  attachment  on  the  part  of  its  votaries.  The  Church, 
it  is  said,  has  so  preoccupied  men's  minds  with  visionary 
interests,  and  so  spent  itself  in  providing  for  them,  that 
temporal  well-being  has  suffered  injurious  slight,  and  in  the 
flight  from  invisible  evils  there  is  no  visible  good  that  has  not 
been  flung  away.  Dispose  as  he  may  of  this  objection,  the 
disciple  finds  something  infinitely  higher  in  the  Christian 
life  for  an  ideal  future  than  in  the  Pagan  surrender  to  the 
actual  present ;  and  thinks  it  a  sublime  thing  that  the  heart 
of  the  world  should  have  been  held  in  upward  aspiration 
for  so  many  ages,  and  have  drawn  down,  from  beyond  its 
boundary  clouds,  divine  lights  upon  its  passion,  grief  and  sin. 
'Wlierever  the  genius  of  Christendom  seems  to  thrill  him  with 
a  tenderer  tone,  and  reach  him  in  deeper  seats,  reducing  his 
moan  of  pain  to  a  patient  monody,  touching  sorrow  with 
sanctity,  and  turning  the  strife  of  conscience  into  a  drama  of 
j)ersonal  affection,  there  is  secretly  present  the  form  of  in- 
finite hope  which  is  inseparable  from  the  trust  in  infinite  love. 

A  certain  eclipse  of  this  world  by  the  interposition  of 
another  to  intercept  the  light  of  God  is  on  all  hands  attri- 
buted to  Christianity,  with  protest  by  some,  with  triumph  by 
others.  The  concerns  of  the  individual  soul  have  been  carried 
off  into  a  supramundane  region,  and  raised  there  to  such  a 
magnitude  as  to  dwarf  the  simple  duties,  and  flatten  the  civic 
and  social  claims,  which  constitute  the  real  material  of  life. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  547 

A  religion  which  takes  over  all  that  is  choice  in  beauty,  in 
holiness,  in  joy,  into  the  space  beyond  Death,  must,  it  would 
seem,  leave  the  hither  side   in  shadow,  and  evince  its  own 
power  by  abating   the   desires   which  find  their  satisfaction 
here.     How  then  did  this  transcendent  Hope  become  charac- 
teristic of  the  new  Faith  ?     Is   it   the  one  great  discovery, 
given  by  a  sudden  burst  of  revelation,  and  delivered  at  once 
in  its  full  force  to  the  human  heart  ?  and  shall  we  say  that 
Judaism  was  the  true  religion  of  this  life,  and  Christianity  of 
the  other  ?     Was  it  the  work  of  Jesus,  either  by  his  word  or 
by  his  resurrection,  first  to  open  the  boundless  future,  and 
alter  in  a  moment  the  whole  proportions  of  our  nature  and 
our  lot  ?     And  did  all  the  pious  before  him  live  wholly  in  the 
temporal,  and  all  after  him  chiefly  in  the  eternal '?     Not  so. 
These   paroxysms   of    transition   are    impossible   to    human 
thought,  and  uncongenial  with  the  Divine   method  ;  and  if 
ever  we   imagine  them,  it    is  because,  as  we  look  over  the 
crowded  plain,  we  are  liable,  with  all  the  aid  of  our  watch- 
tower   and   our   glass,  to   catch   the  figures  at    intervals  of 
changed  place,  and  miss  the  movements  that  have  borne  them 
thither.     No  consciousness  appears  in  the  ministry  of  Jesus 
of  any  extension  of  hope  that  might  not  be  drawn  from  the 
old  scriptures  and  was  not  familiar  to  the  prayers  of  every 
synagogue.     It  was  a  Jew  who  asked  him  what  he  should  "  do 
to  inherit  eternal  life."     It  was  a  doctrine  of  the  Pharisees  for 
which  Jesus  gave  verdict  when  he  proved,  from  the  ancient 
names  of  God,  that  "  the  dead  live."*     And  his  own  resur- 
rection was  treated  by  his  apostles  only  as  the  leading  example 
of  a   general   fact   which   they   believed  before,    and   which, 
except  in  its  date,  they  believed  no  otherwise  afterwards.     It 
was  not  by  sudden  disclosure,  but   by  a  gradual  growth  of 
faith,  which  had  been  in  progress   for   ages,  and  was  still 
to   continue  for    ages    more    and   is  unexhausted  yet,  that 
the  temporal    life  of  man    became,   in   Christendom,  but  a 
prelude  to   the   eternal,   and   the  real  drama  of  the  Divine 
government  was  lifted  from   the   level   of   the   present  to  a 
higher  stage. 

The  earliest  vision  of  an  ideal  Future  which  settled  into  a 

•  Matt.  xxii.  29-32.     Mark  xii.  24-27.     Luke  xx,  34-37. 

N    N    2 


54S  SEVERANCE    OF  UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.    [Book  IV. 

prophetic  hope  looked  no  further  than  this  world,  and  was 
simply  a  political  aspiration  in  a  crisis  of  national  distress. 
The  sigh  of  the  captives  in  Babylon  for  their  native  land, 
their  songs  of  home  demanded  from  them  by  the  stranger, 
their  memory  of  Zion  bathed  now  in  a  light  that  had  never 
clothed  it  before,  were  turned  by  their  prophets,  as  interpre- 
ters of  the  mercy  and  righteousness  of  God,  into  a  longing 
trust  in  restoration.  The  God  of  their  Fathers  would  not 
desert  them,  but  still,  in  this  new  wilderness  of  exile,  would 
move  before  them  as  their  guide  in  cloud  or  fire,  and  never  leave 
them  till  they  stood  withm  the  borders  of  their  promised  land. 
Had  he  not  given  his  word  to  faithful  Abraham,  and  shown  in 
the  glory  of  his  servant  David  how  little  it  had  been  forgot '? 
And  was  his  Providence  in  history  going  to  cast  them  off,  and 
take  up  with  the  nations  that  blasphemed  him  ?  Impossible  ! 
sooner  would  the  nursing  mother  forget  her  child  than 
Jehovah  forget  the  sorrows  and  disappoint  the  inheritance  of 
Israel.  When  he  had  chastened  for  a  season,  he  would  lift 
up  a  reconciled  countenance  on  them  again ;  the  story  of  his 
ancient  mercies  would  be  resumed ;  a  highway  would  be 
opened  across  the  desert  for  their  return ;  the  parched  land 
should  be  fruitful  to  feed  them,  water  from  the  rock  should 
cool  their  thirst,  and  the  river  should  divide  to  let  them 
through  ;  the  bulwarks  and  the  sanctuary  of  Jerusalem  should 
be  rebuilt ;  and  her  people,  purified  by  the  bitterness  of  their 
afflictions,  should  be  all  righteous,  and  know  the  Lord  from 
the  least  even  to  the  greatest.  Nor  would  the  disturbed 
balance  of  justice  fail  to  be  set  right ;  the  oppression  of  the 
heathen  should  be  known  no  more ;  for  the  godless  nations 
who  had  ruled,  it  should  now  be  the  turn  to  serve,  and  they 
that  would  not  serve  should  perish.  Arising  from  the  ashes 
of  her  long  contrition,  and  clad  in  garments  of  beauty,  Zion 
should  be  the  joy  and  pride  of  the  whole  earth,  and  none  that 
lifted  up  an  arm  against  her  should  prosper. 

This  dream  of  exile,  the  imagery  of  which,  painted  in  the 
indelible  colouring  of  the  prophets,  has  never  faded  but 
become  symbolical  of  higher  things,  is  the  original  type  of 
every  later  "  Kingdom  of  God."  Its  scene  was  on  the  map  : 
its  hour  was  within  a  life-time,  and  while  you  spake   of  it, 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES    OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  549 

might  strike.  Death  did  not  lie  in  the  midway  to  distance  it, 
but  only  a  little  longer  patience  of  the  living.  No  super- 
natm-al  spaces,  no  night-journey  between  the  worlds,  cut  it 
off  from  the  approach  of  thought ;  but  only  the  sunny  tracks 
of  the  caravan  and  a  few  days'  evening  halt  at  the  margin  of 
the  wells ;  and  then,  the  bushy  banks  of  Jordan,  and  the 
palm-groves  of  Jericho,  and  at  last  the  well-remembered 
ravines  that  gird  the  city.  The  whole  picture  was  political 
and  patriotic,  the  image  of  a  State  perfected  in  the  faithful- 
ness of  its  citizens  and  the  blessing  of  its  God.  In  due  time, 
the  return  of  its  captives  partially  ensued  ;  but  as  it  never 
realized  the  brilliant  visions  of  the  seers,  as  new  generations 
witnessed  new  apostasies  and  suffered  more  odious  oppressions, 
as  the  march  of  events  still  increased  the  dependence  and  the 
dispersion  of  Israel,  instead  of  gathering  them  home  as  the 
sacred  caste  of  humanity,  the  promise  moved  on  into  the 
future,  and  the  glory  of  the  later  days  seemed  j/et  to  come. 
New  prophets  adorned  it  with  fresh  features,  and  spread  their 
canvas  on  a  larger  scale  ;  sometimes  softening  the  harsh  self- 
righteousness  of  the  theocratic  spirit  ;  but  for  the  most  part, 
as  the  passion  of  disappointed  faith  became  more  intense, 
deepening  the  vindictive  shadows  of  the  picture,  and  giving 
larger  space  to  the  extermination  of  idolatrous  nations  than  to 
the  happy  supremacy  of  the  people  of  God.  But,  throughout 
these  changes,  and  during  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  and  till  after 
the  Apostolic  age,  and  not  less  among  the  Christians  than 
among  the  Jews,  the  essence  of  the  vision  was  still  the  same : 
— of  a  divine  Commonwealth  in  Palestine,  to  redress  the 
wrongs  and  terminate  the  confusion  of  history,  and  realize 
unmixed  the  justice  and  holiness  of  the  providential  rule. 

In  its  original  form,  the  conception  of  the  restored  and 
perfected  Jerusalem  had  embraced  only  the  liberated  exiles  who 
were  to  rebuild  and  establish  the  sacred  city.  It  represented 
the  pious  work  which  the  enthusiasm  of  the  living  generation 
marked  out  for  itself,  or  accepted  at  the  prophetic  call.  But 
as  the  hope  became  the  inheritance  of  generations  undistin- 
guished from  each  other  ;  and  as  the  prophets  outvied  their 
forerunners  in  the  splendour  of  their  representations  :  as  habit 
fixed  and  devotion  consecrated  the  scenery  of  the  latter  days, 


550  SEVERANCE    OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

it  seemed  as  if  the  glory  so  long  deferred  would  be  too  great 
to  be  lavished  on  the  degenerate  eyes  of  its  last  expectants 
only ;  while  those  to  whose  fidelity  and  patience  the  promise 
had  been  given,  in  whose  glowing  words  it  had  been  handed 
down,  who  had  stood  up  against  terror  and  death  in  witness 
to  it,  had  no  part  or  lot  in  that  for  which  they  lived  and 
perished.  Were  they  to  lie  in  the  prisons  of  the  Underworld, 
and  dwell  among  the  shades,  while  all  that  they  had  longed 
to  see,  and  tried  to  hasten,  was  realized  without  them,  and 
their  own  songs  of  hope  were  being  chanted  in  the  tones  of 
triumph  ?  It  could  not  be  :  it  would  be  a  fatal  defect  in  the 
action  of  the  drama  were  a  place  not  provided  for  them.  They 
were  but  in  the  upper  store-house  of  Hades  ("  the  bosom  of 
Abraham  ")  reserved  for  the  souls  of  the  righteous  ;  and  doubt- 
less it  was  placed  there,  far  above  the  deep  dungeon  where 
the  wicked  lie,  that  it  might  give  up  its  captives  to  return  to 
life  upon  the  earth  when  the  trumpet  sounds  on  Zion.  For, 
what  kingdom  could  be  glorious  to  their  children  from  which 
Abraham  and  Isaac  and  Jacob  were  shut  out  ?  By  such 
natural  train  of  thought  did  the  veneration  for  pious  ancestors 
enlarge  the  first  register  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  open 
pages  for  the  names  of  the  historic  dead.  And  this  additional 
feature,  this  unlocking  of  the  superior  half  of  the  mortuary 
world,  entering  with  Daniel  (xii.  2),  remains  constant  to  the 
time  of  Paul. 

There  is  still  another  source  of  enrichment  to  the  original 
contents  of  "  the  Kingdom."  The  conception  of  the  Under- 
world was  inseparably  connected,  in  the  Hebrew  imagination, 
with  their  practice  of  Cave-hurial,  which  seemed  to  introduce 
the  dead  into  the  interior  darkness  of  the  earth,  and  leave  the 
soul  to  explore  a  way,  and  wait  a  guide,  to  deeper  clefts  and 
lower  mysteries.  But  tradition  told  of  a  few  exceptional  cases 
in  which  there  was  no  burial.  Enoch  had  disap]3eared,  "for  God 
took  him."  Moses  had  passed  away,  and  his  sepulchre  could 
never  be  found.  Elijah  had  been  swept  aloft  in  a  chariot  of  fire.* 
Of  all  these,  the  abode  was  therefore  in  the  upper  and  eternal 
light  of  the  Divine  pavilion ;  and  they  mingled,  as  the  only 

*  Irenseus  (Hser.  B.  V.  3-7)  cites  the  translatiou  of  Enoch  and  Elijah 
ajcnong  his -p-rools  oi  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES  OF   UNION    WITH  COD.  551 

human  element,  in  the  society  of  higher  natures.     As  they 
too  were  prophets  of  the  holy  nation,  nay,  the  greatest  of  them 
all,  who  could  deny  to  them  their  share  in  the  later  glory  ? 
and  how  could  the  Kingdom  dispense  with  their  presence  ? 
They  also  must  come,  and,  as  befits  their  prophetic  character, 
rather  hcfore  the  hour,  than  at  the  time,  when  the  hosts  are 
mustering  from  below.*     And  so  it  was  the  belief  of  every 
Jew  that  "Elias  must  first  come."     Out  of  the  elements  thus 
accumulated  have  arisen  all  the  Christian  conceptions  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  in  the  sense  of  a  life  beyond  death ;  chiefly 
by   the   interfusion   of  three   additions, — the   nomination  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  the  Messiah,  the  doctrine  of  a  suffering 
Messiah,  and  the  assurance  of  his  resurrection.     When  this 
constant  supplement  had  been  inwrought  into  the  prior  Jewish 
texture,  the  expectation  gained  considerably  in  definiteness  : 
the  person  was  no  longer  a  secret ;  he  had  delivered  his  notice, 
and  the  time  was  near  ;  he  was  an  immortal,  and  would  bring 
heavenly  powers  to  terminate  the  imperfection  of  earthly  and 
mortal   things.     But  these  fixed  conditions  might  variously 
select  from  the  previous  less  determinate  materials ;  and  by 
taking  more  or  fewer,  and  preferring  this  to  that,  and  filling 
up  ideally  the  spaces  still  left  open,  disciples  of  different  genius 
might  arrive  at  conceptions  of  "last  things  "  far  from  identical, 
or  even  accordant.     This  has  actually  occurred,  not  only  by 
development  in  the  course  of  time,  but  within  the  first  age 
and  among  the  writers  of  the  New  Testament ;  so  that  scarcely 
has  an  eschatological  faith  been  propounded  in  Christendom, 
though  as  different  from  the  rest  as  that  of  "the  latter  day 
saints  "  or  the  Universalists  from  that  of  the  Diviua  Corn- 
media,  which  is  without  some  countenance  from  the  Christian 
Scriptures. 

The  prevalent  form  of  the  earliest  expectation  respecting  the 
"  kingdom  of  God  "  is  represented  in  the  Synoptical  Gospels, 
especially  in  the  prophetical  chapters  of  Matthew!  and  Luke,  t 
which  so  strangely  mix  up  together  the  downfall  of  Jerusalem 
and  the  "  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  on  the  clouds  of  Heaven." 
It  alters  nothing  in  the  Jewish  preconception,  but  simply  ap- 

*  First  expressed  by  jialaclii,  iv.  5,  6.  -j-  :;xiv.,  xicv. 

J  xxi.  7-36. 


552  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDl VINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

plies  it  to  the  person  of  Jesus  and  the  conditions  of  the  times. 
It  treats  the  scenery  and  contents  of  the  "  kingdom  "  as  known 
from  Daniel,  and  announces  it  as  "  at  hand."  The  premoni- 
tory signs  of  the  approaching  crisis,  wars  and  famines  and 
unheard-of  ^X'i\pig,  lying  prophets  and  desecration  of  the 
Temple,  are  enumerated  ;  and  then,  at  the  appearance  of 
"  the  Son  of  Man  with  power  and  great  glory,"  and  the  sound 
of  the  angels'  trumpets  to  "  summon  his  elect  from  the  four 
winds,"  the  tribes  of  the  earth  that  know  him  not  mourn  that 
the  hour  is  come  which  shall  take  them  all  away.  Whether 
mourning  or  rejoicing,  all  are  gathered  together  before  the 
throne  of  the  Son  of  Man,  separated  from  one  another  as  the 
shepherd's  goats  from  the  sheep,  to  hear  the  judgment  passed 
upon  them  :  those  who  had  received  the  Son  of  Man  when  he 
taught  in  their  streets,  or  had  befriended  his  disciples,  being 
admitted  to  eternal  life :  those  who  had  left  his  invitations 
unheeded  and  his  people  uncared  for  being  doomed  to  eternal 
fire,  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his  angels. 

To  measure  the  interval  between  this  picture  and  any 
modern  Christian's  conception  of  "  the  kingdom  of  Heaven," 
the  reader  has  only  to  notice  the  following  points  :  (1.)  The 
whole  scene  is  terrestrial, — the  descent  of  an  invading  army 
from  heaven  upon  the  earth,  on  the  grass  of  which  the 
throne  is  planted  and  the  populations  stand  before  the  Judge  : 
(2.)  That  the  multitude  includes  none  but  the  livi7ig  generation, 
swept  in  from  their  cities  and  their  lands  ;  no  resurrection  is 
mentioned  and  no  dead  are  there  ;  and  judgment  goes  by  the 
reception  given  to  the  warning  advent  and  its  messengers  ; 
it  is  accordingly  said,  "  this  generation  shall  not  pass  away  till 
all  these  things  be  accomplished:"  (3)  The  judicial  test  that 
parts  the  ways  of  eternal  blessing  and  eternal  curse  is  purely 
moral  and  affectional,  conditioned  by  no  redemption,  mention- 
ing no  cross,  and  implying  no  gift  of  foreign  righteousness : 
(4.)  In  the  absence  of  any  hint  of  a  termination  to  the  reign 
on  earth  "  prepared  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,"  it  is 
evidently  meant  to  be  taken  as  eternal,  and  not  as  for  a  term 
of  years,  the  mere  prelude  to  an  ulterior  consummation. 

In  all  the  writings  of  this  Judaic  type,  the  dominant  as- 
sumption is,  that  the  work  of  Christ  is  mainly  yet  to  come : 


Chap.  IV,]         THEORIES   OF  UNION    WITH  GOD.  553 

the  promise  is  given,  the  person  has  been  named,  and  sent  as 
his  own  forerunner,  and  the  preparations  for  his  return  are 
yet  in  train,  but  the  "  Kingdom"  itself  is  only  ready  to  be 
revealed.  The  intensity  of  the  interest  is  all  in  the  future ; 
the  attitude  of  the  present  is  expressed  in  a  word,  "  Watch, 
and  again  I  say  unto  you.  Watch  !  "  "  Lift  up  your  heads,  for 
your  redemption  draweth  nigh."  Of  this  prospective  out-look 
several  new  features,  not  found  in  the  Synoptic  picture,  make 
their  appearance  in  the  Book  of  Eevelation.  There  is  laid 
open  to  the  Seer  what  is  passing  in  heaven  during  the  interval 
of  watching  and  waiting  upon  earth  ;  and  among  the  particulars 
unheard  of  before  are  the  following : 

(1.)  The  Crucified  appears  before  the  throne  of  God  as  a 
Lamb  that  had  been  slain ;  and,  having  with  his  blood  pur- 
chased unto  God  men  of  every  tribe  to  make  a  holy  kingdom, 
is  celebrated  by  the  heavenly  host  as  worthy  to  break  the  seals 
and  open  the  judgment-rolls  of  the  book  of  Life,  and  receive 
power  and  glory,  and  blessing  for  ever.*  The  judicial  appoint- 
ment is  thus  immediately  appended  to  the  giving  of  ' '  his  life 
as  a  ransom  for  many." 

(2.)  Under  the  altar  are  seen  the  souls  of  the  martyrs,  slain 
for  their  testimony  to  the  word  of  God,  crying  out  "  how 
long,  0  Holy  and  True,  dost  thou  not  avenge  our  blood?  "  A 
white  robe  is  given  to  each  ;  and  they  are  told  to  be  patient 
yet  a  little  time,  till  their  number  is  made  up.f  The  Seer  then 
must  henceforth  think  of  these  servants  of  Christ  as  already 
taken,  one  by  one,  to  be  with  him  where  he  is,  and  not  as  in 
the  waiting-halls  of  Hades,  to  rise  first  at  his  coming. 

(3.)  The  terrible  meaning  contained  in  Matthew's  phrase, 
the  tribes  of  the  earth  shall  mourn  at  "  the  sign  of  his  com- 
ing "  is  unfolded  for  the  Seer,  as  he  watches  the  advance  of 
the  "Faithful  and  True  Word  of  God,"  leading  his  White 
Squadrons  to  the  final  victory,  and  sees  how  "  his  sharp  sword 
smites  the  nations  "  and  wreaks  on  them  "  the  fierceness  of 
the  wrath  of  Almighty  God,"+  and  visiting  Eome  itself,  and 
all  that  it  carries,  with  such  utter  destruction,  that  it  vanishes 
as  a  millstone  flung  into  the  sea.  And  so  the  earth  is  cleansed 
for  the  "  City  of  God  "  that  is  to  rise  instead. 

^'  E3V.  V.  G-13.  t  Ecv.  vi.  9-11.  %  Rev.  xvii.-xix. 


554  SEVERANCE   OF   UNDIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

(4.)  The  forces  of  Satan  being  thus  broken,  he  himself  is 
chained  and  cast  into  the  abyss,  which  is  sealed  up  for  a 
thousand  years.  Not  that  the  Gentile  tribes  are  swept  away  : 
they  still  have  their  place  on  the  habitable  world,  but  un- 
seduced  by  their  deceiver,  are  innocuous  to  the  encampment 
of  the  saints.  Now  therefore  begins  the  reign  of  Christ ;  and 
to  make  up  the  number  of  his  elect  occurs  the  first  resurrec- 
tion, which  calls  from  the  dead  all  and  only  those  who  bear 
his  name :  they  will  surround  and  serve  him  for  a  thousand 
years,  and  never  know  a  second  death.*  Thus  is  inaugurated 
the  millennium,  which  plays  so  great  a  part  in  the  faith  of 
Christendom  during  its  first  two  or  three  centuries,  and  at 
many  an  epoch  of  its  later  history. 

(5.)  Satan  when  loosed  at  the  end  of  the  thousand  years, 
has  been  brought  to  no  rej)entance  by  his  long  imprisonment : 
"deceiving  the  nations"  as  before,  he  gathers  an  army  to 
invest  the  commonwealth  of  the  Saints ;  but  it  is  consumed 
by  a  bolt  from  heaven  ;  and  he  is  cast  into  the  fiery  lake, 
to  be  tormented  day  and  night  for  ever.  For  the  final  rid- 
dance of  the  strife  and  vestiges  of  ill  upon  the  world,  one  thing 
only  remains  ;  the  second  Kesurrection,  viz.,  of  the  mixed 
multitude  of  dead  :  they  are  brought  up,  from  the  tombs  and 
from  the  sea,  to  stand  before  the  "  great  white  Throne,"  while 
the  books  are  opened  and  searched  for  every  name,  both  great 
and  small.  They  are  "judged  according  to  their  works;" 
and  they  "  whose  names  are  not  written  in  the  Book  of  Life 
are  cast  into  the  lake  of  fire ;  "  into  which,  as  "  the  last 
enemy  "  Death  with  its  Hades  is  also  flung. t 

(6.)  Is  not  this  then  the  end  of  the  world-history  ?  and  for 
the  immortals  told  off  from  the  book  of  life  will  not  the  scene 
change  to  Heaven  ?  On  the  contrary,  the  purified  earth  now  at 
length  fulfils  its  purpose  ;  and,  descending  on  it  from  heaven, 
there  is  seen  the  New  Jerusalem,  vast  and  glorious,  watered 
by  the  river  and  shaded  by  the  trees  of  life  "  whose  leaves 
are  for  the  healing  of  the  nations  :"  for,  strange  to  say,  there 
are  still  Gentiles  around  the  sacred  province,  who  admire  its 
stainless  beauty  and  marvel  at  its  never-waning  light  of  God 
and  the  Lamb,  and  bring  their  homage  and  their  gifts  through 

*  Rev.  XX.  1-6.  t  Ibid.  7-15. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNION   WITH  GOD.  555 

the  gates  that  are  always  open.*  Thus,  even  in  this  ultimate 
and  eternal  scene,  the  apocalyptic  imagination  still  clings  to  the 
earth,  and  rather  brings  down  God  from  heaven  to  dwell  with 
men,  than  bears  them  away  to  be  "  as  the  angels  "  with  Him. 

With  the  Apostle  Paul,  as  might  be  expected,  the  way  is 
opened  to  a  more  Spiritual  conception.  To  him,  Christ's  re- 
deeming work  was  not  a  merely  promised  thing,  to  be  apoca- 
lyptically contemplated,  but  a  completed  fact  that  looked  down 
from  the  cross  and  penetrated  the  inmost  depths  of  human 
life,  and  needed  only  to  be  met  with  an  answering  gaze  in 
order  to  reunite  the  beholder  to  the  family  of  God,  and  make 
it  of  small  account  whether  his  place  were  on  earth  or  in 
heaven.  To  live  in  Christ,  to  commune  with  God,  to  have 
one  love,  one  will  with  theirs,  it  was  not  necessary  to  cross 
the  barrier  of  death  ;  "  the  first-fruits  "  were  already  here  of 
all  the  blessed  harvest  experiences  there.  It  is  therefore  on 
the  present  and  known  sample  of  this  eternal  life,  on  its 
inner  springs  of  power  and  peace  and  outward  victories  of 
faith,  that  the  apostle  chiefly  dwells  ;  and  on  the  invisible 
sequel  which  they  everywhere  imply  he  expatiates  only  as  the 
doubts  of  others,  or  personal  crises  of  his  own,  may  seem  to 
require.  But  when  he  does  so,  it  is  highly  interesting  to 
notice  the  still  imperfect  fusion  of  the  Judaic  elements  which 
he  brought  and  the  diviner  which  he  had  found,  and  their 
vain  efforts  to  adjust  themselves  together. 

Setting  aside  the  second  Epistle  to  the  Thessalonians  as 
unauthentic,  we  meet  with  only  two  direct  expressions  of 
eschatological  doctrine  in  the  apostle's  writings,  each  in 
correction  of  some  misapprehension  or  contradiction  on  the 
part  of  his  own  converts.  In  his  first  preaching  of  the 
ascended  Christ,  his  own  "  heavenly  vision  "  had  so  absorbed 
him,  and  so  eagerly  carried  his  mind  on  to  the  Advent  which 
came  next,  that  he  had  spoken  as  if  it  might  happen  to- 
morrow when  he  and  his  hearers  would  all  be  there  ;  for  was 
it  not  to  be  an  event  for  that  living  generation  ?  He  had 
forgotten  to  provide  for  what  befell  after  he  had  left  Thessa- 
lonica :  Death  pursued  its  way,  and  did  not  pass  the  Chris- 
tian door-posts  b}' :  in  this  home  or  that,  the  place  of  the 

*  Rev.  xxi.  1-xxii.  5. 


556  SEVERANCE   OF   UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

father,  wife,  or  child  was  vacant ;  and  how  desolate  would 
be  any  gathering  of  saints  which  they  had  missed  by  falling 
asleep  too  soon  !  thrown  as  they  are  into  the  miscellaneous 
company  of  the  unsanctified  dead,  how  shall  they  ever  be 
recovered  and  overtake  the  dear  ones  who  have  gone  forth  to 
meet  their  Lord  ?  It  may  be  that  the  apostle  had  never 
before  faced  this  sorrowful  prol^lem,  and  that  now,  for  the 
first  time,  he  gives  definite  form  to  the  parts  of  his  own  pre- 
conception. At  all  events,  his  answer  is  distinct :  namely, 
that  on  the  appearance  of  Christ,  the  very  first  thing  will  be 
the  rising  of  the  Christians  who  have  fallen  asleep,  and  that 
then  the  living  whom  they  have  rejoined  will,  along  with 
them,  be  carried  up  to  meet  the  Lord  in  the  air,  and  be 
thenceforth  ever  with  him.*  It  is  but  the  case  of  Jesus  over 
again :  he  died,  and  God  raised  him  to  heaven :  these 
disciples  have  died,  and  them  also  God  will  raise,  and  bring 
them  back  with  Jesus's  return  to  heaven. f  What  is  here 
represented  plainly  is,  a  simultaneous  resurrection  of  Chris- 
tians only  to  eternal  life  with  Christ  and  God  in  heaven. 
And  the  sole  end  of  Christ's  advent  appears  to  be  the  gather- 
ing of  his  elect  from  among  the  dead  and  living.  No  hint  is 
given  of  any  other  act,  or  of  any  prolonged  stay  in  the 
terrestrial  precincts,  affording  scope  for  the  scenes  of  a 
theocratic  drama. 

Within  a  year  or  two  of  this  earliest  exposition  of  "  last 
things,"  the  apostle  wrote  that  grander  description  of  them 
which  is  read  at  every  funeral,!  and  has  filled-in  the 
Christian  conception  of  immortality  with  the  most  impressive 
images  it  contains.  It  agrees  with  what  he  had  said  to  the 
Thessalonians  in  the  Time-order  of  events :  "  Christ  the 
first-fruits  ;  afterwards,  they  that  are  Christ's  at  his  coming." 
It  agrees  further  in  limiting  the  resurrection  at  that  date  to 

*  1  Thess.  iv.  15-17.  "  We  that  are  alive  and  are  left  unto  the  coming  of 
the  Lord  shall  in  no  wise  precede  them  that  are  fallen  asleep.  For  the  Lord 
himself  shall  descend  from  Heaven  with  a  shout,  with  the  voice  of  the  arch- 
angel, with  the  trump  of  God :  and  the  dead  in  Christ  shall  rise  first :  then 
we  that  are  alive,  that  are  left,  shall  together  with  them  be  caught  up  in  the 
clouds  to  meet  the  Lord  in  the  air :  and  so  shall  we  ever  be  with  the  Lord." 

t  Ibid.  14.  "If  we  believe  that  Jesus  died  and  rose  again,  even  so  them 
also  that  are  fallen  asleep  in  Jesus  will  God  bring  v.'ith  him." 

X  1  Cor.  XV.,  especially  20-28,  50-55. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  557 

the  Christians  ;  for  though  in  the  words  "  As  in  Adam  all  die, 
so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive,"*  he  seems  to  make  the 
resurrection  to  life  co-extensive  with  the  reign  of  death,  such 
an  interpretation  misses  his  real  meaning ;  it  is  not  the  same 
"all"  of  which  he  speaks  in  the  two  clauses:  each  is  the 
"  all  "  of  its  own  class  ;  the  one,  the  "  all "'  of  Adam's  race, 
the  other,  the  "  all "'  of  Christ's  :  in  neither  case  bringing  the 
entail,  whether  of  death  or  of  life,  to  those  who  are  "  none  of 
his."  The  relative  order  also  assigned  to  the  rising  of  the 
dead,  and  the  transfiguring  "  change  "  of  the  living  (  "  we  "  ) 
is  the  same  as  in  the  statement  to  the  Thessalonians :  "  tlie 
dead  shall  be  raised  incorruptible,  and  we  shall  be  changed  ; 
for  this  corruptible  must  put  on  incorruption,  and  this  mortal 
must  put  on  immortality."! 

Here,  however,  the  parallelism  ends.  If  the  Corinthians, 
in  reading  their  letter,  asked,  "  JVliere  then  shall  we  share 
this  incorruptible  life  with  Christ'?"  they  would  not  indeed 
find  any  categorical  answer,  such  as,  '  It  will  l)e  in  heaven,' 
or,  '  It  will  be  on  earth.'  But  they  would  learn  how  the 
reign  on  which  Christ  enters  "  at  his  coming  "  is  to  be  spent, 
and  at  what  point  it  is  to  culminate  ;  its  work  is  to  abolish 
"  all  rule  and  all  authority  and  power  ;  for  he  must  reign  till 
he  has  put  all  enemies  under  his  feet :  the  last  enemy  that 
shall  be  abolished  is  death.":!:  But  Earth  is  the  gathering- 
place  of  the  "enemies"  of  God,  and  thither  therefore  it  is 
that  their  appointed  conqueror  comes  ;  and  there  too  it  is 
that  Death  prevails  over  the  Divine  life-giver,  and  swallows 
up  every  light  he  kindles ;  and  nowhere  else  can  these  foes  be 
met,  and  their  tyrannv  be  ended  bv  their  extinction.  So 
long  then  as  this  contlict  lasts,  the  throne  of  Christ  must 
stand  upon  this  world  ;  and  the  kingdom  of  God  which  he 
administers  must  be  a  commonwealth  of  saints  still  environed 
by  alien  peoples  of  mortal  race.  The  underlying  conception 
therefore  certainly  is  that  of  a  simultaneous  resurrection  of 
Christians  only  to  a  Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth. 

But  "  then  cometh  the  end,  when  he  shall  deliver  up  the 
kingdom  to  God,  even  the  Father  ;"§   "then   shall  the   Son 
also  himself  be  subject  to  him  that  did  subject  all  things, 
«•  1  Cor.  XV.  22.  t  Ibid.  52,  53.  t  Ibid.  2i-2G.  §  Ibid.  24. 


558  SEVERANCE    OF   UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

that  God  may  be  all  in  all."*  In  announcing  this  sublime 
consummation,  the  apostle  gives  no  formal  notice  of  a  change 
of  scene.  But  can  we  suppose  him  to  see  Christ  descend  the 
steps  of  his  throne,  only  to  stand  and  move  with  his  disciples 
upon  the  earth  which  he  has  just  made  the  cemetery  of  incor- 
rigible nations,  and  the  hiding-place  of  vanquished  Death '? 
Must  he  not  rather  return  to  heaven  to  resign  his  commission 
into  the  Father's  hands,  and  take  with  him  those  that  are 
his,  the  immortal  host  that  have  been  raised  to  be  like  him, 
and  through  him  united  in  spirit  with  God  himself?  The 
earth  was  for  the  earthy:  heaven  for  the  heavenly.  "The 
second  man  is  of  heaven  :"  and  "as  is  the  heavenly,  such 
are  they  also  that  are  heavenly."  Where  but  with  God  above 
can  be  the  eternal  home  and  such  a  hierarchy  of  spiritual 
life  as  the  apostle  plants  in  the  transcendent  space  beyond 
"the  end"?  Unlike  the  Apocalypse,  which  builds  a  new 
Jerusalem  in  heaven  to  let  it  down  upon  this  world,  he  creates 
and  gathers  a  new  and  Christ-like  humanity  below,  and  when 
it  has  adequately  tried  its  immortal  powers,  lifts  it  to  the 
beatific  vision  and  the  Primary  abode  of  Divine  Perfection. 

Before  quitting  this  memorable  chapter,  it  is  worth  while 
to  notice  a  curious  illustration  which  it  incidentally  affords  of 
the  embarrassing  questions  raised  by  the  prospect  of  the  near 
Advent.  We  have  seen  how  the  belief  in  a  "  first  resurrec- 
tion" at  the  Parusia  started  at  Thessalonica  an  anxious 
problem  respecting  the  relative  place  and  share,  in  the  crisis, 
of  the  survivors  and  of  their  departed  fellow-believers ;  and 
how  the  apostle  Paul  laid  the  anxiety  to  rest.  This  was  not 
the  only  trouble  which  the  foreshadowed  Advent  brought. 
Its  resurrection  selected  those  only  who  were  disciples  of 
Christ,  and  had  been  "  baptized  into  his  death,  "f  Now  in 
many  a  Christian  family,  loved  and  honoured  members  had 
passed  away,  ere  they  had  been  thus  sealed  with  Messiah's 
name, — perhaps  a  father  too  old  for  new  thoughts,  or  a 
mother,  for  new  affections,  or  a  heedless  youth  who  could 
listen  to  nothing  in  Syrian  Greek  ;  yet  all  of  them  with  hearts 
full  of  ancient  piety.  Were  they  really  to  be  left  in  the 
outer  darkness,  while  their  children,  and  brothers  and  sisters, 
*  1  Cor,  XV.  28.  t  Rom.  vi.  3. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNION    WITH  GOD.  559 

passed  the  sacred  gates  ?  So  intolerable  was  the  thought 
that  the  practice  established  itself  of  baptizing  them  by 
deputy ;  living  friends  undergoing  the  rite  and  making  the 
requisite  profession  in  their  name ; — a  practice  indirectly 
sanctioned  by  the  Apostle  Paul  when  he  asks  what  would  be 
the  use  of  it,  if  the  dead  were  not  to  rise.  "  Why  should 
they  then  be  baptized  for  the  dead'?"*  for  it  is  to  secure 
their  rising  that  it  is  done. 

If  between  these  two  apocalyptic  passages  there  is  a  vari- 
ance in  the  laying  of  the  scene,  in  one  or  two  others  the  apostle 
is  betrayed  into  a  deviation  from  both  in  regard  to  the  time  of 
passing  from  death  to  life.  And  the  difference  is  here  the 
more  evident,  because  it  emerges  indirectly  in  the  impulsive 
outpouring  of  personal  feeling,  and  not  in  doctrinal  exposition 
as  yet  imperfectly  cleared  from  clinging  shreds  of  traditional 
belief.  Writing  to  the  Corinthians  in  a  later  epistle,  he 
touches  on  the  question  whether,  to  the  Christian,  life  here  is 
worth  living,  as  compared  with  what  would  happen  if  it  closed ; 
and  says,  "  We  know  that  if  our  earthly  house  of  this  taber- 
nacle be  dissolved,  we  have  a  building  from  God,  a  house  not 
made  with  hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens.  For  in  this  we 
groan,  longing  to  be  clothed  upon  by  our  habitation  which  is 
from  heaven ;  if  so  be  that,  being  clothed,  we  shall  not  be 
found  naked.  For  indeed  we  that  are  in  this  tabernacle  do 
groan,  being  burdened ;  not  for  that  we  would  be  unclothed, 
but  that  we  would  be  clothed  upon,  that  what  is  mortal  may 
be  swallowed  up  in  life.  Now  he  that  hath  wrought  us  for 
this  very  thing  is  God,  who  gave  unto  us  the  earnest  of  the 
Spirit.  Being  therefore  always  of  good  courage,  and  knowmg 
that  whilst  we  are  at  home  in  the  body  we  are  absent  from  the 
Lord  (for  we  walk  by  faith  and  not  by  sight),  we  are  of  good 
courage,  I  say,  and  willing  rather  to  be  absent  from  the  body, 
and  to  be  at  home  with  the  Lord."t 

Not  long  before  this  problem  was  settled  for  him,  he  adverts 
to  it  again.  To  the  flock  at  Philippi  he  says,  "  To  me,  to  live 
is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain.  But  if  to  live  in  the  flesh, — if 
tliis  is  the  fruit  of  my  work,  then  what  I  shall  choose  I  wot 
not :  For  I  am  in  a  strait   betwixt  two,  having  the  desu'e  to 

*  1  Cor.  XV.  29.     •  t  ^  Cor.  v.  1-8. 


56o  SEVERANCE   OF  UN  DIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [Book  I  v. 

depart  and  be  with  Christ,  for  it  is  far  better :  yet  to  abide  in 
the  flesh  is  more  needful  for  your  sake."* 

Here,  in  this  longing  "  to  be  absent  from  the  body  "  in  order 
to  be  "  present  with  the  Lord,"  in  this  "  going  to  be  with 
Christ,"  instead  of  waiting  for  "his  coming,"  is  the  unmis- 
takable anticipation  of  immediate  passage  of  the  individual  to 
immortality  at  death.  If  this  be  so,  "  they  that  are  Christ's  " 
are  already  gone,  and  are  not  here  below  to  "  rise  at  his 
coming." 

These  variations  occur  in  the  apostle's  treatment  of  ques- 
tions arising  within  the  Christian  fold  and  involving  no  glance 
beyond.     But  he  has  to  break  these  bounds  ;  for  the  Gentiles 
were  his  care;  his  function  was,  to  bring  them  within  the 
compass  of  God's  righteous  government,  instead  of  applying 
to  them  the  sentence  of  Jewish  scorn,  as  the  off-scouring  of 
the  world.     He  can  place  them  on  the  same  platform  with 
Israel  only  by  widening  the  conception  of  the  Divine  Law,  so 
as  to  cover  with  its  sanctity  not  only  the  outward  legislation 
of  Sinai,  but  the  inward  mandates  of  the  human  conscience. 
This    code,    written    "not    on  tables  of   stone,  but    on    the 
fleshly  tables  of  the  heart,"  supplies,  he  insists,  the  rule  by 
which  the  righteous  Judge  of  all  the  earth  will  award  to  the 
Gentile  the  same  blessing  or  curse  that  visits  the  Jew  who 
keeps  or  breaks  the  law  of   Moses.      The  same  nature  has 
been  given  to  both  :  the  same  will  has  been  revealed  to  both  : 
and  if  both  have  failed  and  have  forfeited  the  promise,  the 
redeeming  grace  which  interposes  for  the  one,  and  asks  for 
loving  faith  instead  of  perfect  work,  is  no  less  offered  to  the 
other.     Whichever  of  the  two  therefore  presumes  to  judge  or 
despise   the   other   is   without  excuse :    Wherein   he   judges 
another,  he  condemns  himself.     "  Despisest  thou  the  riches 
of    his   goodness   and    forbearance    and    long-suffering,   not 
knowing  that  the  goodness  of  God  leadeth  thee  to  repent- 
ance ?  but  after  thy  hardness  and  impenitent  heart  treasurest 
up  for  thyself  wrath  in  the  day  of  wrath  and  revelation  of  the 
righteous  judgment  of  God?  who  will  render  to  every  man 
according  to  his  works ;  to  them  that  by  patience  in  well- 
doing seek  for  glory  and  honour  and  incorruption,  eternal 

*  Phil.  i.  21-24. 


Cliap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION   WITH  GOD.  561 

life :  but  to  them  that  are  factious  and  obey  not  the  truth, 
but  obey  unrighteousness,  shall  be  wrath  and  indignation, 
tribulation  and  anguish,  upon  every  soul  of  man  that  worketh 
evil,  ci  the  Jew  first,  and  also  of  the  Greek  :  for  there  is  no 
respect  of  persons  with  God."* 

This  purely  ethical  doctrine,  which  attaches  eternal  life  to 
faithfulness  of  conscience,  and  visits  unfaithfulness  with  wrath 
and  tribulation,  assumes  free  power  in  man  to  go  with  the 
right  in  spite  of  temptation  to  wrong :  it  is  to  a  righteousness 
achieved  by  his  personal  will  that  the  heavenly  promise  is 
given :  and  if  it  is  not  achieved,  the  dreadful  retribution  is 
treated  as  deserved.  How  can  these  assumptions  be  reconciled 
with  the  apostle's  fundamental  principle,  that,  in  virtue  of  his 
carnal  constitution,  man  is  "  sold  under  sin,"  and  incapable 
of  realizing  the  moral  good  which  he  knows  but  passes  by '? 
Moreover,  in  the  judgment  of  God  before  which  the  Gentiles 
are  here  brought,  it  is  plainly  assumed  that  the  searching  of 
hearts  will  deliver  over  some  to  eternal  life,  others  to  penal 
anguish  :  the  former  being  accepted  for  their  holiness  of  life. 
Yet,  as  Gentiles  pure  and  simple,  strangers  to  the  dispensa- 
tion of  grace,  they  cannot  have  appropriated  the  redemption 
and  the  righteousness  of  Christ,  and  taken  to  the  life  of  faith, 
without  which,  according  to  Paul's  gospel,  no  one  can  enter 
the  kingdom  of  God. 

It  is  impossible  to  combine  these  various  statements  into  a 
coherent  whole.  The  apostle  would  necessarily  start  from  the 
Messianic  doctrine  of  his  nation  ;  and  he  certainly-  ended  with 
the  consciousness  of  a  life  in  Christ  and  of  Christ  in  him, 
which  was  already  the  beginning  of  an  eternal  union,  and 
imbued  him  with  a  spirit  of  holiness  not  his  own.  And  in 
this  mood,  the  life  here  and  the  life  there  were  so  much  one 
that  the  former  would  naturally  seem  to  flow  into  the  latter 
without  any  period  of  arrest  by  the  icy  touch  of  death.  That 
the  immediate  transit  of  each  soul  at  the  passing  bell  from 
earth  to  heaven  was  his  last  belief  may  be  reasonably  sup- 
posed. But  in  reaching  this  point,  it  is  vain  to  conjecture 
what  elements  of  his  traditional  conception  he  consciouslj' 
dismissed  as  he  went  along,  and  what  he  retained  without 

■'■  Rom.  ii.  4-11,  with  the  context  1-lG. 

O  O 


562  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVINE  ELEMENTS.    [BooklV. 

noticing  their  incongruity  with  his  advancing  thought.  But 
the  presence  of  inconsistent  assumptions  in  one  and  the  same 
exposition  indicates  at  least  the  occasional  ascendency  of 
fluctuating  feeling  over  exactitude  of  reflection. 

If  the  Messianic  eschatology  fell  away  into  the  background 
of  the  apostle's  mind  under  the  growing  influence  of  Gentile 
thought  and  mystic  feeling,  it  vanished  altogether  from  the 
theology  of  the  fourth  gospel.  For  the  evangelist,  as  for  the 
apostle,  the  work  of  Christ  was  already  complete  on  his  leav- 
ing the  world  and  going  to  the  Father  ;  and  if  there  was  yet 
in  reserve  an  appendix  of  futurity,  it  was  not  that  the  Son  of 
God  had  half  fulfilled  the  conditions  of  human  salvation,  hut 
only  that  the  operation  of  the  change  was  large  and  long,  and 
needed  time  to  bring  to  pass  all  that  was  bespoken.  For  both 
these  writers,  therefore,  what  was  yet  to  come  paled  before 
the  glory  of  the  realized  past ;  and  to  Paul  the  Cross,  to  the 
evangelist  the  Incarnation,  were  the  all  in  all  of  the  revealed 
economy.  Between  them,  however,  there  was  a  difference  as 
to  the  contents  of  what  yet  remained  to  be.  To  the  former, 
while  still  not  quite  free  from  Messianic  images,  the  future 
included  some  dramatic  incidents,  of  visible  resurrection,  of 
bodily  transformation,  of  public  judgment,  on  the  way  to  a 
final  merging  in  eventless  blessedness  :  to  the  latter  it  was 
simple  continuity,  in  ulterior  development,  of  that  eternal  life 
in  the  Father  which  the  Son  had  instituted  in  his  assumption 
and  sanctification  of  humanity.  To  see  God  is  itself  conse- 
cration and  immortality ;  as  Irenaeus  says,*  "O^aaiq  Biov 
TTtofTToa/rfKr)  dcp^aoalac] ;  and  the  mediator  of  this  vision  is 
the  manifested  Logos  :  "No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time  : 
the  only-begotten  Son,  which  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father, 
he  hath  declared  him  :"  t  and  thus  commenced  in  his  dis- 
ciples the  emergence  into  incorruption,  as  Irenreus  also  says, 
i)  jvuxTig  TOO  v\ou  Tov  ^eov,  i;r'C  ')i'  ai/jCapcrta.l  So  that  while, 
at  its  opening  stage,  salvation  begins  with  beholding  the  Son, 
and  rises  into  sanctification  and  reprieve  from  death,  its 
ulterior  and  heavenly  stage  begins  with  the  beholding  of  the 
Father,  and  passes  into  degrees  of  assimilation  to  Him,  con- 
summating the  resemblance  already  commenced  in  a  life  of 
*  lY.  3S,  K.  278.  t  John  i.  18.  J  IV.  3G,  7,  A.H.  518. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UXION    WITH   GOD.  563 

love.  Here  we  take  leave  of  the  last  remnants  of  mythology 
hanging  around  the  Parusia  :  there  is  no  provision  for  re- 
tributory  treatment,  but  only  a  continuance  of  the  self  aicards 
of  this  life  :  and  for  the  children  of  God  an  eternal  growth  of 
light  and  love  through  the  nearer  and  purer  knowledge  of 
Him.  And  thus  the  belief  in  a  crisis  of  resurrection  is 
transformed  into  a  faith  in  immortal  existence. 

From  this  review  of  the  first  records  of  the  evangelic  faith, 
the  positions  universally  accepted  are  easily  selected :  Christ 
is  risen  :  he  lives  with  the  Father  in  heaven  :  he  communes 
with  his  people  by  the  Holy  Spirit :  he  will  reunite  them  with 
himself  and  God  for  ever.  Whether  the  scene  of  that  reunion 
will  be  in  heaven  or  on  earth  :  whether  to  each  as  he  dies,  or 
to  all  collectively  at  the  date  of  Christ's  return  :  whether  after 
:a  public  judgment,  special  for  the  Christians  or  general  for 
mankind,  and,  in  either  case,  with  what  discriminate  reward ; 
are  questions  on  which  there  is  no  consensus  among  the 
■different  writers,  and  on  which  even  the  same  writer  is  at 
times  at  variance  with  himself.  Even  the  accepted  suspense 
till  Messiah's  Parusia  was  not  proof  against  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  dying  martyr  who  would  spring  aloft  to  him,  instead 
of  sleeping  in  the  tomb  until  he  came :  for  was  it  not  Stephen 
in  Jerusalem  that  cried,  as  he  fell,  "  Lord  Jesus,  receive  my 
spirit  "  ?  *  In  the  last  strife  it  was  the  natural  feeling  of  the 
Hellenist  confessor,  as  it  was  of  the  Gentile  apostle,  that  it 
were  gain  to  go  and  be  with  Christ.  And  the  author  of  the 
Apocalypse,  who  professedly  breaks  the  sleep  of  the  dead  only 
at  the  first  and  the  second  resurrection,  could  not  himself 
refrain  from  admitting  the  martyrs  to  heaven ;  though  only 
to  lie  still  beneath  the  altar,  and  crv  "  How  long  ?  "  till  their 
Avenger  should  call  "  them  that  are  upon  the  earth "  to 
account  for  their  blood  shed  upon  it.f  It  is  plain  that  to 
the  Jewish  and  Christian  imagination  the  heaven  of  God  was 
no  longer  reserved  for  natures  exclusively  divine,  with  the 
addition  of  the  two  or  three  prophets  who  had  l)oen  bodily 
transported  thither  from  the  ground  on  which  they  walked. 
It  was  deemed  accessible  also  to  human  lives  whose  lost  blood 
stained  the  dust,  and  whose  pale  forms  were  still  within  the 

*  Acts  vii.  59.  t  Rev.  vi.  9-11. 

o  o  2 


564  SEVERANCE    OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV, 

tombs.  "We  know  indeed,  from  the  pre-Christian  book  "  The 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,"  that  the  Hellenic  doctrine  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul  had  found  ready  acceptance  among  the 
colonial  Jews,  as  solving  problems  embarrassing  to  a  Theism 
limited  to  this  temporal  world :  "the  souls  of  the  righteous 
are  in  the  hand  of  God,  and  there  shall  no  torment  touch 
them:"*  "the  righteous  live  for  evermore  :"t  "their  hope 
is  full  of  immortality:"!  "  to  be  allied  unto  wisdom  is  im- 
mortality. "§  When  this  higher  scene  was  once  opened  to 
religious  hope,  and  the  lifted  veil  showed  "the  spirits  of  the 
just  made  perfect  "  already  living  in  the  present,  it  entranced 
the  finer  souls  of  Israel,  and  gave  them  something  that  touched 
them  more  than  the  imagery  of  the  traditional  Messianic 
mythology.  Without  conscious  disloyalty  to  the  national 
"  Kingdom  of  God"  in  reserve  for  this  world's  future,  their 
heart  was  rather  in  the  immediate  home  above  which  held 
not  only  all  that  they  adored,  but  all  that  they  had  most 
loved  and  lost.  The  two  faiths  coexisted,  and  came  up  by 
turns,  without  consciousness  of  their  inconsistency ;  and  the 
imagination  could  draw  upon  either,  as  private  need  or  social 
sympathy  prescribed.  The  apocalyptic  reasoning  and  repre- 
sentations which  were  a  power  in  the  synagogues  of  Palestine, 
were  a  hindrance  and  a  repulsion  in  the  schools  of  Alexandria  ; 
and  accordingly  they  find  no  place  in  Philo's  theology.  And 
the  one  feature  which  commended  Christianity  to  the  Gentiles 
who  soon  formed  the  mass  of  its  professors,  was  its  union  of 
a  pure  monotheism  with  a  faith  in  immortality  and  a  corre- 
sponding standard  of  ethical  life. 

It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  the  Messianic  and  the  spiritual 
versions  of  the  kingdom  of  God  could  have  been  tied  up  for 
seventeen  centuries  together  as  functions  of  the  same  religion, 
if  they  had  been  left  to  their  natural  play  upon  the  thought 
and  conscience  of  mankind.  The  same  influences  which 
brought  the  apostle  Paul  to  speak  of  death  as  a  shorter  way 
to  Christ  than  living  till  he  came,  and  which  led  the  fourth 
evangelist  to  treat  the  eternal  life  in  heaven  as  already  here 
and  now,  and  never  to  be  broken,  would  have  everywhere 
alienated  the  Christian  mind  from  the  mythology  of  its  in- 

*  iii.  1.  i   V.  15.  :;:  iii.  4.  §  viii.  17. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNION    WITH  GOD.  565 

fancy,  and  lifted  it  into  a  higher  stratum  of  religious  expe- 
rience. Nay,  even  the  mere  lapse  of  time  must  have  displaced 
the  whole  scheme  of  the  Parusia,  and  broken  up  its  scenery 
as  the  images  of  a  dream.  If  to  the  apostle  -James  or  Peter, 
after  preaching  that  "  the  Lord  is  at  hand,"  "it  is  the  last 
hour,"  the  truth  had  been  suddenly  laid  bare,  that  neither  in 
"  that  generation,"  nor  for  upwards  of  sixty  more,  would  any 
Christ  appear,  what  would  have  become  of  the  missionary's 
zeal  ?  Could  he  go  to  the  next  station,  and  repeat  his  tale 
with  mere  omission  of  the  date  ?  Or  would  he  not  feel  that, 
with  the  date,  all  that  was  dated  had  vanished  ?  Nothing 
can  authenticate  a  prediction  that  fixes  a  time  and  goes  wrong 
upon  it.  He  who  assures  us  "  it  will  be  fine  tomorrow,"  can- 
not, when  it  rains  all  day,  make  his  case  good  by  saying,  "  No 
matter,  if  you  wait  long  enough,  it  will  still  be  fine." 

Instead  of  letting  these  disappointed  anticipations  fall  away 
by  their  own  self-refutation,  the  Catholic  Church  committed 
itself  to  them  all,  as  well  as  to  the  teachings  of  opposite 
tendency,  so  far  as  they  found  expression  in  the  writings  de- 
clared to  be  canonical.  By  treating  all  the  stages  of  Christian 
belief  through  the  apostolic  and  post-apostolic  age — -Judaic, 
Pauline,  Alexandrine — as  one  divine  text,  of  which  itself  was  the 
one  divine  interpreter,  it  arrested  the  natural  disengagement 
of  the  permanent  from  the  perishable  elements ;  and  by  incon- 
gruously blending  spiritual  truth  and  apocalyptic  imaginations 
in  an  authoritative  re(\u\a  fidci,  it  no  less  ensured  a  history  of 
hopeless  contention  than  if  it  had  laid  a  tesselated  pavement 
for  the  floor  of  its  sanctuary,  and  required  every  worshipper  to 
declare  it  all  white  marble. 

Through  the  first  century,  the  Jewish  version  of  the  Gospel, 
with  the  Pauline  enlargement  of  its  scope,  had  exclusive  pos- 
session of  the  field.  The  Christian  communities  claimed  to  be 
the  true  Israel,  released  from  its  law,  l)ut  heirs  of  its  faith, 
and  the  last  heralds  of  its  promises.  How  completely  they 
could  identify  their  future  "  kingdom  of  God  "  with  that  of  the 
watchers  "  for  the  consolation  of  Israel  "  is  evident  from  the 
mere  presence  of  the  Book  of  Pievelation  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  from  the  partnership  of  Jewish  and  Christian  hands 
in   the    elaboration    into    their    final    form   of    such    other 


566  SEVERANCE   OF  UNDIVIAE  ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

apocalyptic  productions  as  the  Sibylline  Oracles,  the  Book  of 
Enoch,  and  the  fourth  Book  of  Ezra.  The  retention,  indeed, 
of  the  Messianic  mythology,  even  in  its  most  repulsive  features, 
by  the  Church  teachers  and  Fathers  of  the  second  century,  was 
largely  answerable  for  the  rise  and  influence  of  Gnosticism, 
which,  directly  under  Marcion,  and  indirectly  under  Valentinus 
and  Basileides,  was  an  insurrection  against  the  Jewish  God 
and  his  world-system  as  exhibited  in  the  Old  Testament  law 
and  ritual,  and  a  transference  of  allegiance  to  the  God  of  grace 
and  goodness  first  revealed  and  represented  by  Jesus  Christ. 
The  prime  condition  of  the  new  allegiance  was  to  turn  away 
from  the  Hebrew  Demiurge,  and  leave  him  to  conduct  his 
favourites  as  he  may  through  the  ill-constituted  scene  on 
which  he  has  placed  them  ;  and  to  throw  a  whole  heart  of 
faith  into  the  worship  and  service  of  the  God  of  purity  and 
love  :  that  is,  Christianity  must  break  with  Judaism,  and 
assert  itself  as  religion  ideal  and  absolute ;  the  salvation  it 
offers  is  not  in  the  world,  but  from  the  world  ;  and  brings  such 
peace  of  God,  even  in  chains  or  martyrdom,  as  to  silence  the 
prayer  for  thrones  and  Paradise. 

No  one  who  reads  the  records  of  millennarian  belief  in  the 
second  and  third  centuries  can  wonder  at  this  extreme  in- 
sistence on  the  special  Christian  characteristics.  The  mass  of 
puerile,  vindictive,  and  sensuous  imaginations  which  made  up 
the  Chiliasm  held  in  common  by  Papias,  Justin  Martyr, 
Irenseus,  Hippolytus,  TertulHan,  and  popular  still  for  a  century 
more,  bear  a  distressing  witness  to  the  state  of  thought  and 
character  in  the  ecclesiastical  society  of  the  time,  and  might 
well  call  forth  the  unsparing  protest  of  reformers  to  whom 
Christ  was  the  power  of  spiritual  life  and  love.  Justin  makes 
it  an  essential  element  of  orthodoxy  to  expect  the  return  of 
Christ  for  his  thousand  years'  reign  in  Jerusalem,*  and  there- 
fore to  believe  in  "  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh," — an  article 
of  faith  on  which,  with  strange  perversity,  an  extraordinary 
stress  was  laid.  So  absolute  was  the  assumption  of  identity 
between  the  body  of  the  entombed  and  the  body  of  the  risen 
person,  that  Justin  says,  "  the  lame,  the  crippled,  and  the 
blind  will  have  to  be  made  whole  by  Christ,  as  he  healed  the 

=*  Dial.  c.  Trypli.  80.  16. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNION   WITH  GOD.  567 

infirm  in  Galilee";  and  TertuUian  asks,  ""What  would  be  the 
use  of  numbering  all  the  hairs  of  the  head,  except  to  make 
sure  that  none  of  them  shall  perish"?  An  apologist  whose 
work  erroneously  passes  under  the  name  of  Justin,  finds  in  the 
aaoKoq  dvdaTamg  the  One  addition  which  Christ  has  made  to 
what  was  already  known  on  the  subject,  Pythagoras  and  Plato 
having  established  the  immortality  of  the  soul.*  Irenteus,  in 
describing  Antichrist,  borrows  the  account  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  from  Daniel,  and  applies  it  to  Eome  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  Satanic  wickedness  on  earth.  As  soon  as  this  enemy 
has  planted  himself  in  Jerusalem  (which  will  happen  at  the 
approaching  six-thousandth  birthday  of  the  world) ,  Christ  will 
come  and  destroy  him,  and  clear  the  way  for  the  seventh  or 
sabbath  millennium,  appointed  for  his  terrestrial  reign.  His 
saints,  whose  souls  have  been  somewhere  kept  in  store  for  this 
crisis,  will  recover  possession  of  their  bodies  by  the  first  resur- 
rection ;  and  will  enter  on  the  blessed  life  of  the  kingdom. 
Its  seat  will  be  Palestine,  for  tJicre  was  the  promise  of  it  given 
to  Abraham  on  behalf  of  the  heirs  of  his  faith.  The  fields  and 
gardens  will  yield  their  produce  a  myriadfold  beyond  all  ex- 
perience ;  the  very  chaff  of  the  grain  contenting  the  lion's 
appetite  and  changing  his  habit,  to  lie  down  in  peace  with  the 
lamb.  At  a  table  loaded  with  the  abundance  of  the  land  the 
saints  will  sit  down  to  eat  and  drink  with  the  Lord  ;  and  so 
will  pass  the  time  which  is  to  compensate  the  sufferings  of  the 
past.  When  the  thousand  years  have  expired,  the  second  re- 
surrection will  bring  up  the  rest  of  the  dead,  to  be  disposed  of 
at  the  general  judgment,  and  the  kingdom  of  Christ  be  re- 
placed by  the  sole  monarchy  of  God.t  Not  only  is  the  reader 
warned  against  understanding  all  this  in  any  but  the  most 
literal  sense  ;  but  he  is  particularly  protected  from  the  Vv'eak- 
ness  which  is  offended  by  the  resurrection  of  the  fiesh  ;  those 
(he  is  told)  who  prefer  to  think  of  each  individual  soul  passing 
immediately  from  death  to  God,  overlook  the  need  of  some 
intermediate  steps  of  preparation  for  so  great  a  change  as 
that  from  the  purely  temporal  to  the  purely  spiritual 
state. 

This   plea  of  stages  of   ascent  from  earth  to  heaven  was 

"•'  Pseudo-Justiu.      Do  Kcsurrectiouc,  c.  10.  f  Ircnosus,  V.  25-35. 


568  SEVERANCE   OF   UA' DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

turned  to  better  account  in  the  next  generation  by  Origen. 
He  also  believed  in  the  continuity  of  the  soul  between  a  first 
existence  and  a  second  ;  but  provided  for  it  more  effectually 
than  by  locking  it  up  meanwhile  in  an  asphyxiating  closet  of 
Hades.  He  also  believed  in  a  life  of  passage  from  this  -world's 
experience  to  a  higher  yet  beyond.  But  the  discipline  with 
which  he  supplied  it  consisted,  not  of  eating  and  drinking 
with  the  Lord  at  a  table  of  miraculous  profusion,  but  of 
exposure  of  a  nature  already  free  from  carnal  functions  to  the 
purifying  fire  of  a  humbled  conscience  and  more  fervent 
aspirations,  such  as  are  congenial  to  a  first  Paradise,  and 
furnish  tension  towards  an  ulterior.*  So  far  did  he  carry 
this  conception  of  successive  ascents,  at  each  of  which  some 
residuary  elements  of  grossness  were  burned  up  or  dissipated, 
as  to  land  himself  at  last  in  the  belief  of  universal  restoration 
and  capacity  for  life  in  God.!  The  theory  is  remarkable  in 
more  ways  than  one  :  as  illustrating  the  irrepressible  aversion 
to  pay  away  the  soul  into  Death,  on  no  other  security  for  its 
immortality  than  the  promise  of  a  general  resurrection  ;  as  a 
mode  of  combining  the  faith  in  individual  immortality  with 
that  of  stages  affecting  vast  multitudes  en  masse  ;  and  as  an 
early  hint  of  a  doctrine  of  jDurgatory. 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  apocalyptic  faith  in  the  coming 
of  Christ  and  his  reign  on  earth  should  lose  its  hold  upon  the 
Church  which  it  had  done  so  much  to  form.  Both  outward  and 
inward  causes  doomed  it  to  decay.  Time  was  ever  working 
against  it.  It  had  committed  itself  to  a  limit  of  date  which, 
though  somewhat  elastic,  soon  came  to  be  overstrained,  and 
when  relinquished,  let  fall  the  whole  contents  of  the  con- 
ception into  utter  insecurity.  As  the  generations  passed  on, 
and  the  kingdom  never  came,  and  the  earth  still  belonged  to 
the  mixed  multitude  of  righteous  and  unrighteous,  and  no 
returning  Nero  ushered  in  the  campaign  of  Antichrist  and 
compelled  the  crisis  which  was  to  throw  off  the  sinful  load,  the 
mythology  broke  up  by  force  of  fact,  and  altered,  first  the 
proportion  of  its  parts,  and  then  the  meaning  of  the  whole.  Its 
centre  of  gravity  shifted  from  the  primary  to  the  subsidiary 

*  TTf/ii  apxaiv,  II.  s.  1-3. 

•;-  Trep'i  dpYcoy,  II.  x.  4-7  ;  I.  vi.  1-4  ;  III.  vi.  1-8  ;  contra  Cels.  VI.  26. 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF  UNIOX    WITH  GOD.  569 

elements.  The  temporal  reign  faded  away ;  its  table  ceased 
to  be  spread;  its  extermination  of  "all  enemies"  vanished 
as  the  trail  of  a  forgotten  dream  ;  the  uncounted  years  of  its 
millennium  suffered  its  extremities  to  coalesce  in  a  single 
point,  the  arrival  of  Christ  to  end  the  world  and  call  the  dead  : 
its  first  resurrection  of  the  saints  and  its  second  of  the  world 
lapsed  into  one ;  and  among  the  myriads  of  the  departed  thus 
brought  before  the  judgment-seat,  it  was  vain  any  longer  to 
look  in  the  foreground  for  the  living  generation  that  was  tc 
"be  changed."  But  with  the  last  act  in  the  world's  drama, 
the  reign  in  Jerusalem,  thus  dropped,  and  "  the  end  "  thus 
hastened  on,  nothing  more  remained  to  be  done  on  this  scene 
of  human  life ;  its  functions  being  closed,  the  solid  earth  itself 
could  hardly  retain  its  characteristics  to  the  thought,  its  cities, 
its  mountains,  and  its  seas,  and,  except  as  the  momentary 
l^latform  of  transition,  must  swim  away  into  nothing  between 
the  heaven  above  and  the  abyss  below.  All  the  interest  lay 
in  the  supernatural  scene,  in  the  realm  beyond  death,  among 
the  spirits  of  the  departed  and  in  the  eternal  home  of 
God. 

With  this  change  of  conception,  however,  new  questions  are 
raised,  or,  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  old  ones  with 
vastly  increased  urgency.  With  a  crisis  close  at  hand,  like 
the  thunder-roll  when  the  lightning  has  flashed,  time  counts 
for  little,  and  the  interval  which  may  separate  us  from  the 
instantaneous  does  not  affect  us.  For  believers  standing  on 
the  watch,  with  loins  girt  and  lamps  burning,  for  the  bridegroom 
on  his  way,  it  was  a  small  thing  on  which  side  of  death  one 
or  another  might  be,  when  his  knock  was  heard  at  the  gate, 
and  his  life-giving  call  gathered  his  own  around  him.  But 
when  his  reported  approach  proved  to  l)e  an  illusion,  and 
his  presence  was  withdrawn,  not  only  into  a  "  far  country  " 
but  into  a  future  quite  indelinite,  the  dreary  outlook  compelled 
men  to  ask  what  they  were  to  think  about  the  long  interval 
between  the  individual  death  and  the  universal  summons  to 
live  again.  Was  it  all  one  unbroken  and  unbreathing  night, 
age  after  age,  in  the  sealed  chambers  of  Hades  ?  and  from  so 
deep  a  sleep  would  anything  remain  which  even  an  archangel's 
trump  could  wake '?     With  the  corruptible  all  gone  long  ago, 


570  SEl'ERAXCE    OF   UN  DIVINE   ELEMENTS.     [Book  IV. 

and  an  absolute  blank  of  the  consciousness  which  carries  all 
that  is  incorruptible,  how  is  the  continuity  saved  which  is  the 
condition  of  personal  sameness  ?  Yet  this  is  the  answer  with 
which  the  creeds  of  the  reformed  Churches  overburden  the 
imagination  and  the  heart  of  Christians.  Many,  however, 
have  preferred  to  turn,  if  not  Hades  itself,  at  least  the  period 
of  waiting  there,  into  an  intermediate  state,  available,  as 
Origen  supposed,  for  disciplinary  purification,  and  the  open- 
ing of  neglected  veins  of  spiritual  development.  Neither  of 
these  doctrines  was  willing  to  part  with  an  ulterior  crisis  of 
general  judgment,  consigning  the  guilty  to  a  penal  under- 
world, and  the  righteous  to  the  heaven  of  the  immortals. 
But  the  fragments  of  the  broken  apocalypse  supplied,  as  we 
have  seen,  yet  a  third  answer  to  the  question  wdiich  every 
bereavement  brings ;  assigning  to  each  soul,  dismissed  from 
its  earthly  tabernacle,  "  a  house  not  made  with  hands,  eternal 
in  the  heavens,"  where  "mortality  is  swallowed  up  in  life;" 
and  blending  the  supreme  utterances  of  Christian  enthusiasm 
into  harmony  with  the  majestic  voices  of  pre-Christian  philo- 
sophy in  Pythagoras  and  Plato.  And  thousands  of  the 
sweetest  strains  of  poetry  and  piety  bear  witness  that  from 
the  larger  minds  of  Christendom  the  lingering  shreds  of  a 
worn-out  mythology  have  dropped  away,  and  the  simple  faith 
alone  remains,  that  each  soul  is  reborn  in  death  into  higher 
life,  and  through  the  silent  spaces  which  we  cannot  penetrate 
finds  some  divine  guide  into  the  society  of  the  wise  and  saintly, 
and  the  nearer  communion  with  God. 

And  in  this  emergence  of  an  imperishable  spiritual  trust 
from  the  perishable  forms  of  imaginative  thought  are  seen  at 
work  the  inner  causes  which  render  every  mythology  transient. 
The  transcendental  relations  which  are  implicit  in  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  human  consciousness  and  report  themselves 
in  the  essential  postulates  of  reason,  conscience,  and  ideal 
affection,  cannot  be  covered  by  any  of  the  explicit  conceptions, 
borrowed  from  sensible  experience,  in  which  we  try  to  clothe 
them,  and  set  them  before  us  in  the  field  of  time  and  space. 
In  the  earlier  stages  of  individual  or  social  growth,  such 
imperfect  symbols  shelter  the  latent  feeling  of  these  rela- 
tions, and  convey  it  from  mind  to  mind,  witnessing  to  it  as 


Chap.  IV.]         THEORIES   OF   UNI  OX   WITH  GOD.  571 

the  common  possession  of  hmnanity ;  or,  at  least,  of  the 
family  or  the  tribe.  With  the  advance  of  thought,  and  the 
continuous  gain  of  creative  energy  upon  subjection  to  the 
sensory  and  imaginative  life,  the  inadequacy  of  the  picture- 
language  for  the  expression  of  meanings  intrinsicalh'  infinite, 
is  profoundly  felt ;  attempts  at  emendation  by  refining  on  it 
give  it  but  a  short  reprieve,  rendering  it  only  a  more  decorous 
illusion  ;  the  heart  of  the  truth  is  still  \Yithin,  beating  in 
silence  but  declining  to  speak  in  terms  of  finite  things.  AVhen 
their  shell  is  broken  and  the  fragments  flung  away,  is  it  that 
nothing  remains  ?  On  the  contrary,  that  an  infinitude  bursts 
into  the  field  of  thought,  annulling  the  limits  to  the  Holiness, 
the  Beauty,  the  Blessedness,  to  which  the  universe  is  conse- 
crated. And  so  it  is,  that  out  of  a  national  ideal,  originally 
stormy  with  a  righteous  yet  angry  despair  of  the  world  and 
impatience  at  its  idolatries,  has  arisen  a  hope  before  which 
those  clouds  have  rolled  away ;  a  hope  at  once  personal  and 
human,  consoling  private  griefs,  warning  individual  sin, 
nurturing  solitar}'  piety,  touching  each  salient  point  of  life 
with  lights  of  brighter  meaning,  and  flinging  tenderer  shadows 
into  every  deeper  recess  ;  and  giving  a  dignity  undreamed  of 
before,  to  man's  nature  under  all  its  poor  disguises.  Disap- 
pointed of  its  earthly  millennium,  Christendom  has  nearly 
doubled  its  millennium  of  heavenly  expectation  ;  and  far 
though  it  be  from  yet  growing  to  the  dimensions  of  its 
immortality,  it  furnishes  clear  evidence,  in  the  deeper  tone 
and  purer  aspiration  and  nobler  self-devotion  of  recent  ages, 
how  congenial,  nay  essential,  to  the  human  conscience  and 
affections  is  the  subhme  faith  that  "All  live  unto  God." 


3/ J 


BOOK     Y. 

THE   DIVINE  IN  THE   HUMA^. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    VEIL    TAKEN    AWAY. 

After  the  separate  notice,  in  the  foregoing  chapters,  of  the 
chief  refracting  media  through  which  the  "  Light  of  the 
world "  has  passed  into  our  modern  Christendom,  it  only 
remains  to  compute  their  combined  effects,  and  by  clearing 
away  both  nimbus  and  corona,  allow  the  orb  to  present  its 
true  form  and  features  to  our  thought  as  once  it  did  to  living 
vision.  The  problem,  however  baffling  from  its  complexity, 
has  of  late  been  brought  sensibly  nearer  to  a  solution  Ijy  a 
number  of  successive  approximations ;  each  of  which,  by 
registering  some  unnoticed  phenomenon  or  some  obscurity 
removed,  simplifies  the  task  of  the  successor  and  deepens  his 
hopeful  interest  in  its  prosecution.  Nothing  indeed  is  more 
characteristic  of  the  present  tendency  of  religious  thought 
than  the  numerous  attempts  to  clear  and  define  the  historical 
image  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  As  if  the  prophecy  had  come 
true  of  him,  that  his  visage  "  was  so  marred  more  than  any 
man's,"  defaced  not  less  by  the  human  colouring  of  tradition 
than  by  the  shadows  of  unfi'iendly  imputation,  one  writer 
after  another  has  resolved,  if  possible,  to  suppress  all  inter- 
posing media,  and  see  the  reality  face  to  face.  A  gallery 
might  be  filled  with  the  revised  portraits  which  these  repro- 
ductions have  put  upon  the  canvas  :  and  the  fewer  the  lingering 
adjuncts  of  artifice  and  fancy,  the  more  will  a  comparing  eye 
be  fixed  by  the  look  of  an  unspeakable  depth  and  majesty. 


574  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [BookV. 

For  this  process,  natural  as  it  is  to  a  mind  reverent  of  crutb, 
it  is  thought  needful,  in  the  presence  of  a  sensitive  and  in- 
curious theology,  to  apologize :  it  is  timidly  suggested  that, 
as  there  was  after  all  "a  human  side  "  in  Christ,  it  can  do  no 
harm  to  look  at  it  for  a  little  Avhile :  that  the  first  disciples 
themselves  began  at  this  end,  and  were  only  gradually 
admitted  to  the  mystery  of  his  higher  nature ;  and  that  his 
own  "  method  "  therefore  is  followed  by  those  who  lead  us  to 
"  behold  the  man,"  provided  they  lift  the  disguise  at  last  and 
bid  us  "  behold  the  God."  Such  defence  is  little  better  than 
the  attack  ;  for  both  proceed  upon  the  same  unworthy  prin- 
ciple :  it  is  permissible,  it  seems,  to  recover  the  historical 
Jesus,  on  condition  that  you  do  not  rest  there,  but  pass  on  to 
the  eternal  Son  :  the  assailant  is  in  terror  lest  you  never  take 
the  step  :  the  defendant's  plea  is  that  you  are  sure  to  go  :  but 
they  agree  that  unless  the  creed  is  secured,  history  must  be 
denied  its  rights.  "  You  may  open  your  eyes,  if  you  will  see 
what  we  prescribe." 

This  want  of  simplicity  brings,  like  all  unfaithfulness,  its 
penalty  of  illusion.  What  it  bargains  for  as  "  divine  "  is 
purely  human  :  what  it  dreads  as  "  human  "  contains  what- 
ever is  divine.  The  "  humanity  "  of  Christ,  what  is  it  ?  His 
inner  personality,  his  individual  life,  the  courses  of  his  thought, 
the  lights  and  shadows  of  his  affections,  the  conflicts  of  his 
will,  as  he  passed  through  the  drama  of  his  years  on  earth, 
a/nd  moved  before  the  eyes  of  man,  and  was  heard  by  living 
ear  in  his  teaching  by  day  and  overheard  in  his  prayers  by 
night.  This  assemblage  of  characteristics  belongs  to  the 
realm  of  positive  fact,  more  or  less  visible  and  appreciable 
by  observers :  and  there  in  the  midst,  if  anywhere,  in  the 
foldings  of  his  secret  worship  and  the  lines  of  his  spiritual 
attitude,  must  whatever  was  divine  in  him  have  worked  and 
told  its  tale.  And  on  the  other  hand,  what  is  meant,  in 
distinction  from  this,  by  "the  higher  nature"  of  Christ? 
Is  it  anything  that  you  ma}^  know  when  you  see  it,  or  that 
can  be  evidenced  if  unseen  ?  On  the  contrary,  it  means 
something  wholly  beyond  the  sphere  of  our  apprehension,  in 
time,  in  place,  in  kind  :  it  refers  to  a  supposed  existence  of 
his  from  all  eternity,  in  realms  unapproachable,  under  condi- 


Ch.^p.  r.]  T//£    VEIL    TAKEN  A  WA  Y.  575 

tions  inconceivable :  it  denotes  in  his  constitution  an  excep- 
tional incarnation  wliieh  it  is  easy  to  imagine  but  impossible 
to  attest :  or,  at  the  lowest,  it  signilies  the  foresight  of  him 
by  long  previous  ages,  and  his  identity  with  the  ideal  in  the 
mind  of  ancient  seers.  These  things,  were  they  even  facts, 
would  be  intrinsically  unsusceptible  of  verification,  lying  as 
completely  out  of  our  cognitive  faculties  as  the  natural  history 
of  the  planet  Mars  or  the  literature  of  Saturn.  They  have  no 
pretension  to  the  character  of  facts  :  they  are  simply  doc- 
trines :  the  reappearance  in  men's  dreams,  when  the  restraints 
of  daylight  were  gone,  of  the  form  which  had  fixed  their 
venerating  eye.  In  short,  they  are  what  men  have  thouglit 
about  the  founder  of  Christianity  and  made  him  out  to  be, 
and  not  what  he  was  in  himself ;  and  constitute  therefore, 
instead  of  the  supremely  sacred  end,  for  the  sake  of  which  the 
historical  portrait  may  be  tolerated  as  a  means,  precisely  the 
element  which  is  purely  human  and  precarious,  the  disappear- 
ance of  which  would  only  correct  the  tentatives  of  fancy,  and 
leave  as  they  were  the  objective  sanctities  of  God. 

And  this  gives  us  at  once  the  rule  for  separating  the  divine 
from  the  human  in  the  origin  of  our  religion.  The  former 
will  be  found,  if  anywhere,  in  what  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ]iii)>se}f 
was,  in  spiritual  character  and  moral  relation  to  God.  The 
latter  will  be  found  in  what  ?ra-s  fliougJit  about  his  person, 
functions,  and  office.  It  was  the  Providence  of  history  that 
gave  us  It  i  1)1 :  it  was  the  men  of  history  that  dressed  up  the 
theory  of  him  :  and  till  we  compel  the  latter  to  stand  aside, 
and  let  us  through  to  look  upon  his  living  face,  we  can  never 
seize  the  permanent  essence  of  the  gift.  By  a  standing 
delusion  of  theological  egotism,  this  rule  has  ever  been 
inverted ;  and  in  every  age,  from  the  apostolic  to  our  own, 
in  every  Church,  from  the  most  hierarchical  to  the  most 
reformed,  Christianity  has  been  taken  to  mean,  not  the  reUfiion 
of  Jesus  Christ,  Imt  some  doctrine  «/;o?/^  Christ ;  and  though 
he  might  draw  you  to  think  his  thought,  and  bear  his  cross, 
and  pray  his  prayer,  you  are  no  Christian  unless  you  will  say 
what  his  substance  was,  and  how  many  natures  he  had,  and 
what  his  place,  past  and  l'utin'(},  in  the  invisible  regions  wliii'li 
are  out  of  history  altogether ;  or,  at  least,  will   own  that  he 


576  THE   DIVINE  IN   THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

was  that  ideal  object  of  Jewish  mythology,  the  Messiah ! 
We  must  not  mistake  all  this  scholastic  dust  for  the  divine 
radiance  that  shoots  through  it  and  lends  it  a  glory  not  its 
own.  It  is  perhaps  a  blind  infatuation  that  impels  us  to  seelc, 
and  a  blind  incompetence  that  forbids  us  to  find,  the  ultimate 
centre  of  God's  spirit  in  our  life,  and  leaves  it  to  work  in 
silence  and  secrecy  in  the  last  retreats  of  aii'ection,  where  it 
softens  the  light  and  deepens  the  vision,  yet  by  never  coming 
before  the  eye  cheats  us  into  thrusting  forward  some  concep- 
tion of  our  own,  as  if  that  which  hid  him  from  us  were  the 
vehicle  of  his  presence.  It  is  in  the  subjective  tincture  of  our 
spirits,  not  in  the  objective  constructions  of  our  intellect, 
that  his  consecration  enters  and  holds  us  :  in  the  tone  of  the 
voice,  more  than  the  words  we  speak  ;  and  many  are  the 
souls  which  know  themselves  one  in  their  religion,  though  no 
two  of  them  could  say  the  same  sentence  of  the  creed.  The 
appealing  personality  of  Christ  has  been,  through  all  dis- 
tortions, the  regulative  power  and  the  source  of  unity  in 
Christendom  ;  and  the  more  it  stands  out  clear  against  the 
sky,  with  every  cloud  from  behind  and  from  before  it  swept 
away,  the  more  single  will  be  our  apprehension  of  the  genius 
of  our  religion. 

The  real  figure  however  cannot,  unfortunately,  be  seen  by 
us  except  through  the  medium  of  human  theories  and  pre- 
possessions. The  previous  chapters  have  shown  how  busy, 
ere  our  earliest  records  were  produced,  speculation  had  been 
with  his  image,  to  find  a  place  for  it  in  some  prevalent 
scheme  of  thought.  To  Paul,  who  had  never  known  him,  he 
was  a  heavenly  vision,  an  impersonated  idea ;  the  interest  of 
which  lay,  not  in  his  past  ministry  and  actual  life,  but  in  his 
position  among  the  ages  and  his  office  in  the  future ;  so  that 
the  Apostle  construed  his  appearance  on  earth  according  to 
the  exigencies  of  a  vast  and  bold  theory  of  history  and 
Providence,  which  earlier  apostles  did  not  share.  The  fourth 
gospel  was  a  reconstruction,  far  in  the  second  century,  of  the 
story  of  Christ's  ministry,  in  the  interests  of  a  new  metaphy- 
sical theology,  and  gave  an  aspect  to  his  person  quite  strange 
to  the  older  delineations.  And  the  other  gospels,  together 
constituting  a  single  source,  twice  revised  and  enlarged,  hav^ 


Chnp.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  577 

all  the  characters,  faithful  and  unfaithful,  of  popular  tradi- 
tion ;  embodying  a  mass  of  genuine  historical  materials  ;  but 
with  many  conspicuous  patches  of  later  addition ;  and 
throughout,  coloured  by  the  Messianic  preconception,  and 
compiled  with  the  resolve  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  shall  be  no 
other  than  the  realized  vision  of  the  ancient  prophets.  To 
draw  forth  the  objective  truth  from  behind  tliis  mist  of  j^re- 
possessions,  we  are  thrown  entirely  upon  internal  evidence. 
And  however  great  may  be  the  room  thus  left  for  fanciful 
combinations,  there  are  some  critical  rules  which  when  applied 
with  competent  historical  feeling  can  hardly  mislead  us.  The 
problem  before  us  is  amenable  to  the  following  three.  They 
are  stated  with  exclusive  reference  to  the  synoptical  gospels, 
as  the  source  of  all  that  can  be  known  of  the  earthly  life  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

1.  Whenever,  during  or  before  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  any 
person  in  the  narrative  is  made  to  speak  in  language,  or  refer 
to  events,  which  had  their  origin  at  a  later  date,  the  report  is 
incredible  as  an  anachronism. 

2.  Miraculous  events  cannot  be  regarded  as  adequately 
attested,  in  presence  of  natural  causes  accounting  for  belief  ui 
their  occurrence. 

3.  Acts  and  words  ascribed  to  Jesus  which  plainly  transcend 
the  moral  level  of  the  narrators  authenticate  themselves  as 
his :  while  such  as  are  out  of  character  with  his  spirit,  but 
congruous  with  theirs,  must  be  referred  to  inaccurate  tradi- 
tion. 

The  first  of  these  rules  compels  us  to  treat  as  unauthentic, 
in  its  present  form,  every  reputed  or  implied  claim  of  Jesus  to 
be  the  promised  Messiah.  In  a  preceding  chapter  reasons 
have  been  given  for  believing  that  Jesus  did  but  take  up  the 
message  of  the  Baptist,  and  proclaim  and  unfold  the  "  Gospel 
of  the  kingdom  "  about  to  come  :  that  he  made  no  pretension 
to  be  himself  the  personal  Head  of  that  kingdom  :  and  that 
his  investiture  with  that  character  was  the  retrospective  work 
of  his  disciples,  who,  once  assured  of  his  heavenly  life,  solved 
the  mystery  of  the  cross  by  drawing  from  the  prophets  the 
doctrine  of  a  suffering  Messiah.  This  affecting  theory  pre- 
sented his  figure  to  their  memory  in  new  lights,  and  hid  within 


578  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

it  secret  meanings  which  they  now  first  read  into  moods  and 
hints  of  his  httle  noticed  at  the  time.  And  as  they  must  have 
supposed  him  conscious  in  himself  of  what  they  now  discovered 
him  to  be,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  they  let  that  consciousness 
speak  out,  here  and  there,  in  terms  of  their  interpretation 
rather  than  of  verbal  reproduction.  There  are  clear  indica- 
tions that  the  subordinate  position  of  forerunner,  assigned  in 
the  gospels  to  John  the  Baptist,  was  by  no  means  acknowledged 
by  his  followers :  they  treated  his  alleged  self-disparagement 
"He  must  increase,  but  I  must  decrease,"  as  a  Christian 
invention  :  nor  could  it  be  denied  to  them  that,  by  accepting 
his  baptism,  Jesus,  no  less  than  others,  became  his  disciple  : 
or  that,  by  seizing  his  message  the  moment  John's  voice  was 
silenced  in  prison,  he  rather  co-ordinated  himself  with  the 
same  mission  than  superseded  it.  Eegarding  him  therefore, 
not  indeed  as  John  "  risen  from  the  dead,"  but  as  John's  con- 
tinuator  among  the  living,  they  neither  surrendered  nor  modi- 
fied their  original  fraternit}^  but  under  both  names  preached 
the  same  gospel,  "  the  kingdom  is  at  hand."  How  else  are 
we  to  understand  the  curious  fact  to  which  I  have  before  re- 
ferred, that  more  than  twenty  years  after  the  crucifixion,  a 
body  of  "  disciples  "  is  found  at  Ephesus,  who  have  been  under 
the  tuition  of  the  fervent  and  learned  Apollos,  a  man  "  mighty 
in  the  scriptures  and  instructed  in  the  way  of  the  law,"  and 
to  whom  he  had  "  taught  carefiiUy  the  things  concerning  Jesus, 
knowing  only  the  baptism  of  John  "  ?  And  this  teaching,  it  is 
added,  was  "  boldly  given  in  the  synagogue."  The  idea  that 
"  Jesus  was  the  Christ,"  when  imparted  by  some  private 
Christians,  came  to  him  as  a  supplement  which  "expounded 
to  him  the  way  of  God  more  perfectly."  *  Here  are  two  co- 
present  schools  or  sects,  the  exact  relation  between  which  it  is 
not  easy  to  define.  Were  they  agreed  that  Messiah  had  already 
proclaimed  himself,  the  one  in  the  person  of  John,  the  other 
in  that  of  Jesus  ?  If  they  were  rivals  in  competition  for  the 
same  office,  each  for  its  own  prophet,  the  claim  for  the  Baptist 
would  set  Jesus  aside  and  loge  him  in  the  throng  of  John's 
disciples :  and  what  then  would  be  "  the  things  concerning 
Jesus  "  which  Apollos  had  to  teach  so  "  carefully  "  ?     It  is 

*  Acts  xviii.  21-28. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  A IVA  K  $79 

evident  that  in  the  view  of  the  learned  Alexandrine,  his  rela- 
tive importance  was  by  no  means  extinguished  by  any  assumed 
Messiahship  of  John,  The  whole  account  becomes  clear  on 
one  supposition  alone  :  viz.,  that  for  neither  prophet  did  the 
Baptist's  sect  assert  a  higher  claim  than  that  of  herald  of 
"  the  kingdom,"  but  regarded  both  as  warning  messengers  to 
prepare  the  world  for  meeting  its  Judge.  In  this  sense,  the 
doctrine  of  the  school  was  a  simple  survival  of  the  very  gospel 
which  riveted  the  multitudes  on  the  hill-sides  of  Galilee  ;  and 
attests  the  living  religion  of  Jesus  himself,  ere  yet  his  disciples, 
left  to  themselves,  had  wrought  out  their  proofs  of  his  identity 
with  the  Messiah  of  whom  he  spoke.  The  whole  contents  of 
the  earthly  life  and  ministry  of  Jesus,  as  of  John,  were  at  the 
disposal  of  Apollos  in  support  of  the  announcement  that  "  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  was  at  hand  "  ;  and  what  he  had  yet  to 
learn  from  Aquila  and  Priscilla  was  that  reappearance  of  the 
Crucified  in  heavenly  form  which  first  marked  him  out  as 
himself  Christ  the  elect.  So  readily  did  he  appropriate  this 
crowning  article  of  faith  that  he  was  at  once  commended  as  a 
fellow-believer  to  the  "  brethren  in  Achaia,"  apparently  with- 
out the  re-baptism  which,  in  the  presence  of  Paul,  was  adminis- 
tered to  his  disciples  at  Ephesus  and  ratified  by  the  gift  of  the 
Spirit.*  It  could  not  be  expected  that  all  the  adherents  of  the 
Baptist's  sect  would  be  equally  prepared  to  accept  the  Christian 
sequel  to  their  faith  in  him,  involving  as  it  did  his  reduction 
to  a  position  subordinate  to  one  of  his  own  baptized.  Their 
society  accordingly  continued  to  exist,  their  rivalry  with  the 
Christians  arising,  not  from  their  making  a  Christian  of  John, 
but  from  their  refusing  to  see  more  than  a  prophet  in  Jesus. 

Had  John  on  the  banks  of  Jordan  reallj'  indicated  Jesus  to 
the  multitude  as  "a  mightier  than  he,  who  would  baptize 
them  with  the  Holy  Spirit  and  with  fire,"  or  had  a  vision  and 
a  voice  from  heaven  startled  them  witli  the  news,  as  he 
emerged  from  the  stream,  that  this  was  he,  it  would  have 
been  the  duty  of  all  the  baptized  to  pass  on  from  the  fore- 
runner to  the  fulfiller :  the  baptism  of  John  would  mean 
nothing  less  than  the  acceptance  of  Christ  in  this  individual 
person.     There  would  have  been  no  possible  room  for  such  a 

*  Acts  xix.  1-7. 

P   V   2 


58o  THE   DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN.  [RookV. 

separate  society  as  that  of  Apollos  at  Ephesus.  There  Hes  a 
prior  history,  now  lost,  behind  the  evangehst's  account  ; 
which  has  shaped  itself,  during  the  apostolic  age,  into  con- 
formity with  the  relation  between  Messiah's  "  great  day  "  and 
the"Elias,"  who  "  would  first  come."*  The  actual  eclipse 
of  the  Baptist's  movement  by  that  of  Jesus  is  thrown  back 
upon  their  personal  relations,  so  as  to  bring  it  into  the  line 
with  prophetic  expectation,  and  give  it  a  divine  significance. 

In  the  first  and  third  gospels,  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus 
occupies  the  very  foreground  of  their  picture,  and  determines 
the  whole  story  of  his  birth  and  infancy.  It  gives  the  key 
both  to  the  external  events  and  the  internal  experience  of  his 
home  life.  It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  throughout  this 
narrative  he  plays  no  other  part,  and  that  if  ever  historic 
words  escape  him  ci  more  modest  tone,  he  is  soon  reinstated 
in  his  more  majestic  voice.  The  second  evangelist,  not  being 
thus  pledged  ah  initio,  is  freer  to  leave  some  ineffaceable  traces 
of  the  natural  truth  ;  and  though  he  too  was  possessed,  when  he 
wrote,  with  the  same  interpretation  of  the  life  he  sketched,  it 
is  as  if  he  knew  that  it  had  not  been  always  so,  but  that  the 
Messianic  consciousness  had  but  dawned  upon  the  mind  of 
Jesus  himself,  and  hardly  perhaps  fully  risen  above  the  horizon 
in  this  life.  The  scene  at  the  baptism  was  not,  as  in  Luke,  a 
public  communication  from  heaven  to  earth,  but  a  breath 
from  an  invisible  wing,  an  oracle  unheard,  perceptible  only 
to  the  baptized.  And  whatever  surmises  might,  at  such  a. 
moment  of  self-dedication,  be  stirring  in  his  heart,  we  have 
seen  that,  at  "  Peter's  confession  "  near  the  other  end  of  his. 
ministry,  he  sharply  silenced  every  claim  of  the  Messiahship 
on  his  behalf.  If  indeed,  as  St.  Paul  tells  us,  it  was  "  by  his 
resurrection  from  the  dead  "  that  he  was  "  declared  to  be  the 
Son  of  God  with  power,  "t  any  prior  declaration  m  that  sense 
could  be  but  "  idle  words,"  which  might  well  be  stopped  from 
repetition.  This  date,  so  naturally  supplied  by  the  apostle,, 
incidentally  lets  out  the  fact  that  the  Messianic  character  of 
Jesus  was  a  posthumous  disclosure  from  the  other  side  of 
death.  And  it  is  surely  much  easier  to  understand,  how  dis- 
ciples might  read  back  into  his  ministry  a  feature  not  yet 

*  Mai.  iv.  5.     :Mark  ix.  11.  t  Eom.  i.  4. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  581 

due,  than  to  account,  as  historical  in  him,  for  the  alternate 
bold  assertion  and  elaborate  suppression  of  the  test-pretension 
of  his  mission. 

When,  therefore,  the  simplest  of  the  gospels  states  that 
thrice  over,  near  Caesarea  Pliilippi,*  on  descending  the  mount 
of  transfiguration,!  and  on  the  way  to  Jerusalem, |  Jesus 
definitely  predicts,  not  only  his  betrayal  and  his  execution, 
but  his  resurrection ;  and,  again,  instructs  his  disciples  on 
the  last  evening  to  seek  him  in  Galilee  after  he  is  risen  from 
the  dead,§  I  cannot  doubt  the  admixture  of  historic  fact  and 
retrospective  interpretation  in  these  passages :  the  real  basis 
of  prediction  being  in  the  personal  forebodings  of  Jesus,  as 
the  shadows  of  hopeless  conflict  closed  around  him :  while  the 
appendix  of  interpretation  was  added  by  the  subsequent  belief 
in  his  resurrection  to  heavenly  life,  and  reappearance  in 
Galilee,  In  all  these  passages  (except  the  last)  Jesus  speaks 
of  himself  in  the  third  person,  as  the  "  Son  of  Man  ;"  and  the 
fact  is  interesting  because  the  phrase  is  probably  here  at  its 
point  of  transition  from  the  humanitarian  to  the  Messianic 
meaning,  appropriated  by  Jesus  in  the  former  sense,  so  dear 
to  his  feeling  and  so  true  to  the  pathetic  outlook,  but  used 
in  the  latter  by  the  evangelist  in  his  belief  that,  "as  it  is 
written,"  this  is  what  Messiah  "  mmt  suffer."  Here  probably 
we  see  laid  bare  the  very  process  by  which  so  often  the  bloom 
and  tenderness  of  Jesus'  words  have  been  swept  away  in  favour 
of  some  hard-cut  quibble  of  the  scribes.  But  in  the  seven 
or  eight  other  instances  in  which  he  is  said  to  take  the  phrase 
to  himself  with  its  Messianic  meaning,  we  are  in  contact, 
I  am  persuaded,  with  the  afterthought  of  the  evangelist ; 
advantage  being  taken  of  his  Ezekiel-usage  to  bring  him  in 
as  a  claimant  on  the  fulfilment  of  Daniel.  If  he  habitually 
assumed  the  title  in  its  apocalyptic  sense,  how  is  it  that  he 
strangely  keeps  the  "  Son  of  Man  "  at  a  distance  from  himself 
as  a  third  person  ?  and  why  does  he  not  say  outright  "  ^^Qioso- 
ever  shall  be  ashamed  of  me  and  of  my  words  in  this  adulterous 
and  sinful  generation,  of  him  shall  I  also  be  ashamed,  when 
J  come  in  the  glory  of  my  Father  witli  the  holy  angels,"  in- 
stead of  "  the  Son  of  Man  also  shall  be  ashamed  of  him, 
*  Mark  viii.  31,  32.       f  Ilj-  ix.  30-32,        X  I^^-  x.  32- 3i,        §  lb,  xiv.  28. 


382  THE   DIVINE   IN  THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

when  he   cometh  in  the  glory  of  his  Father  with  the  holy 
angels."* 

The  same  rule  must  apply  to  other  modes  of  self-assertion, 
based  upon  claims  similarly  transcendent.  From  my  earliest 
remembered  years  of  attendance  on  public  worship,  I  could 
never  hear  without  distress  the  well-known  answer  of  Jesus 
to  the  demand  for  some  sign  accrediting  his  mission  ;  con- 
sisting merely  of  a  reproachful  contrast  of  his  questioner  with 
the  guilty  Ninevites  and  the  Pagan  Queen,  who  could  listen  to 
a  Hebrew  prophet  and  admire  a  wise  king :  while  "  this 
generation"  waited  for  credentials  from  "  One  greater  than 
Jonah  "  and  "  wiser  than  Solomon."  t  And  who  that  listens 
to  his  large  plea  for  sabbatical  freedom,  that  "  the  sabbath 
was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the  sabbath,"  can  believe 
that  he  spoiled  it  by  narrowing  its  ground  to  the  self-pro- 
clamation, "  One  greater  than  the  temple  is  here  "  ?t 

Without  the  same  outward  pomp,  yet  affected  by  the  same 
inner  breach  of  character,  are  two  reports  of  a  burst  of  exult- 
ing thanksgiving  from  Jesus,  shortly  after  the  return  of  his 
disciples  (the  twelve  according  to  Matthew,  the  seventy  accord- 
ing to  Luke),  from  the  preaching  mission  on  which  he  had 
sent  them.  The  exclamation  of  joy  is  the  same  in  both,  and 
is  doubtless  a  remnant  of  unspoiled  tradition,  "  I  thank  thee, 
0  Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  .that  thou  didst  hide 
these  things  from  the  wise  and  understanding,  and  didst  reveal 
them  unto  babes :  yea.  Father,  for  so  it  was  well  pleasing  in 
thy  sight." §  Then  with  a  sudden  change  from  this  heavenly 
flight,  he  takes  the  ground  of  dogmatic  assertion,  though 
still  apparently  in  soliloquy :  "all  things  have  been  delivered 
to  me  from  my  Father  :  and  no  one  knoweth  the  Son,  save 
the  Father :  neither  doth  any  know  the  Father,  save  the  Son, 
and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  willeth  to  reveal  him."  At 
this  point  the  two  evangelists  part  company  :  Matthew  winds 
up  with  the  exhortation  enshrined  through  all  Christian  ages 
in  love  and  sorrow,  "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labour  and 
are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest :  Take  my  yoke 
upon  you,    and  learn  of  me  ;  for  I  am   meek  and  lowly  in 

*  Mark  viii.  38 ;  Luke  ix.  2G.  f  ^latt.  xii.  38-15  ;  Luke  xi.  29-32. 

X  Matt.  xii.  C.  §  Slatt.  xi.  25,  26  ;  Luke  x.  21.   . 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  583 

heart ;  and  ye  shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls  :  for  my  yoke  is 
easy,  and  my  burden  is  light."  Instead  of  this,  Luke  says 
that,  turning  to  his  disciples,  he  said  privately,  "  Blessed  are 
the  eyes  which  see  the  things  which  ye  see  :  for  I  say  unto 
you,  that  many  prophets  and  kings  desired  to  see  the  things 
which  ye  see,  and  saw  them  not ;  and  to  hear  the  things 
which  ye  hear,  and  heard  them  not." 

That  the  truth  and  beauty  of  both  these  passages  must  go 
home  to  every  disciple,  that  they  invest  the  person  of  Jesus 
with  no  grace  and  power  that  is  not  there,  is  beyond  all 
question.  But  then  the  grace,  the  truth,  the  power  of  these 
lineaments  depend  on  their  not  being  proclaimed  by  himself. 
What  meek  and  lowly  soul  was  ever  known  to  set  itself  forth 
as  such,  and  commend  its  own  humility  as  the  model  for 
others,  and  that,  not  because  it  carries  a  fruitful  pain,  but 
because  it  wins  a  restful  ease  ?  A  convert  who,  by  sitting  at 
his  feet  and  looking  up  at  the  secrets  of  his  face,  had  learnt 
to  know  himself  and  renounce  all  but  an  infinite  aspiration, 
might  thus  describe  the  subduing  traits  which  had  given  him 
a  new  birth ;  but  did  a  Saviour  bear  such  testimony  of  him- 
self, his  testimony  would  not  be  true.  Plainly  v/e  have  here 
the  reflective  experience  of  grateful  disciples.  Nor  can  we 
accept  as  more  historical  Luke's  alternative  ejaculation. 
Jesus,  as  the  herald  of  the  kingdom  to  come,  regarded  him- 
self only  as  the  bearer  of  a  warning  and  a  promise,  at  the 
service  of  wdiicli  he  placed  himself,  as  the  Baptist  had  done. 
If  the  fulfilment  had  for  ages  been  longed  for  and  was  now 
near,  this  might  indeed  be  regarded  as  the  privilege  (or  as  the 
terror)  of  "this  generation,"  as  compared  with  the  many  that 
"  had  died  without  the  sight :"  and  to  this  distinction,  viz., 
of  living  at  this  final  crisis,  the  "blessing"  pronounced  by 
Jesus  is  often  supposed  to  refer.  The  true  point  of  tlie  passage 
is  thus  entirely  missed.  It  is  not  a  chronological  contrast  of 
one  age  with  another,  but  a  personal  comparison  of  his  little 
group  of  apostles  as  close  to  himself,  with  the  hearers  who 
from  their  distance  of  either  time  or  place,  knew  of  him  only 
at  second  hand.  The  eyes  and  ears  that  are  blessed  are 
affirmed  to  be  distinctly  and  exclusively  those  of  his  "  private  " 
disciples.     This  could  never  have  been  said  during  the  ministry 


584  THE  DIVINE  IN    THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

of  Jesus  ;  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  was  then  all  in  all,  and 
was  the  same  through  whatever  medium  its  message  came : 
"  he  that  heareth  you  heareth  me  :  and  he  that  rejecteth  you, 
rejecteth  me  ;  and  he  that  rejecteth  me,  rejecteth  him  that 
sent  me,"*  To  "  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh  "  carries 
no  privilege  and  gives  no  one  any  "  occasion  to  glory  :"f  nor, 
when  Paul  asserted  that  he  was  under  no  disadvantage  from 
not  having  seen  Jesus  in  this  life,  was  there  any  sentiment  in 
the  Church  of  his  time  to  contradict  him.  So  long  as  the 
Messianic  vision  stood  right  in  front  and  covered  the  dazzling 
boundary  of  "  that  generation,"  it  concentrated  the  religion 
upon  itself :  the  future  eclipsed  the  past ;  and  no  wondering 
importance  was  attached  to  the  historical  personality  of  the 
messenger  that  brought  the  news.  But  when  "  the  Lord 
delayed  his  coming,"  till  the  Parusia  was  quite  overdue,  the 
transcendent  glory  faded  and  allowed  the  pale  natural  horizon 
to  return ;  and  reverence  for  Christ,  tired  out  with  vain  ex- 
pectancy, fell  back  upon  the  vestiges  of  his  transient  visit,  and 
made  the  most  of  every  trait  which  memory  had  consecrated, 
and  every  incident  which  tradition  had  not  spoiled.  It  was 
not  till  the  post-apostolic  age  that  the  biographical  figure  and 
personal  characteristics  and  ethical  principles  of  life  and  love 
assumed  anything  like  the  place  due  to  them  in  a  permanent 
Church,  and  presented  him  as  the  source  of  a  new  Law  and  new 
Eeligion.  And  then  it  is  that  to  the  true  disciple,  often  per- 
plexed by  uncertain  lights  of  history,  it  would  seem  the  most 
precious  of  privileges  to  have  been  with  him  face  to  face,  and 
heard  him  with  the  living  ear,  and  been  able  to  go  to  him  with 
the  sad  problems  of  life.  And  to  this  time,  and  not  to  his 
own,  belongs  the  feeling  expressed  in  Luke's  benediction. 
We  may  relieve  Jesus  therefore  of  the  alleged  rapturous  re- 
flection, how  blessed  a  thing  it  was  for  anybody  to  be  with 
him. 

To  the  outburst  of  thanksgiving  from  Jesus  which  the  tv/o 
evangelists  have  in  common,  each  appends  a  different  close, 
neither  of  which  could  really  have  come  from  his  lips,  breath- 
ing as  they  do  the  feeling  towards  him  of  other  persons  and 
another  time.     Is  there  anything  which  carries  back  the  trace 

"  Luke  X.  16.  t  2  Cor.  v.  12-16. 


Chap.  l.J  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  585 

of  anachronism  to  the  prior  sentences  in  which  their  citations 
are  the  same  ?  There  is.  In  the  didactic  passage,  which 
forms  the  middle  of  the  speech,  it  is  said,  "  No  one  knoweth 
who  the  Son  is,  save  the  Father :  and  who  the  Father  is,  save 
the  Son,  and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  willeth  to  reveal  him," 
This  is  not  the  language  of  Jesus  or  of  his  time,  as  must  be 
apparent  to  every  one  who  carefully  studies  the  growth  of 
Christian  doctrine.  "  My  "  Father,  "  your  "  Father,  "  our  " 
Father,  these  are  the  terms  of  relation  in  which  alone  he  con- 
ceives and  presents  the  human  spirit  or  his  own  before  God. 
Only  from  heaven,  when  his  ministry  was  past,  was  he 
declared  to  be  "  the  Son  of  God  with  power,"  even  in  the  mere 
Messianic  and  atitliroiJological  sense :  and  the  absolute  anti- 
thesis of  "  The  Son  "  and  "  The  Father  "  first  came  into  use 
with  the  thcohxjkal  doctrine  of  his  person,  when  the  Logos 
theory  had  need  to  distinguish  two  constituents  or  partici- 
pants in  the  Godhead.  Accordingly,  it  is  only  among  their 
latest  additions  that  the  synoptists  have  picked  up  an  instance 
or  two  of  this  employment  of  the  definite  article  with  the 
Divine  name.  Besides  the  passage  now  under  consideration, 
Luke  has  no  example,  Mark  and  Matthew  each  but  one,  in- 
cluding the  baptismal  formula  admitted  to  be  unhistorical. 
In  the  fourth  gospel,  on  the  other  hand,  the  usage  is  all- 
pervading  ;  no  fewer  than  sixty-three  instances  of  it  attesting 
our  transference  to  an  entirely  new  stage  of  belief,  in  which 
speculation  has  macerated  history  and  taken  it  up  into  solu- 
tion. Here  then,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  passage,  already 
historically  discredited  in  its  close,  a  decisive  mark  presents 
itself  of  a  date  long  posterior  to  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus.* 

The  most  surprising  feature  in  the  Christianity  of  the 
apostolic  age  was  its  extension  among  the  Gentiles.  No  such 
thing  had  been  embraced  within  the  message  of  its  founder, 
who  "  was  not  sent  but  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of 
Israel,"!  and  would  not  let  his  missionaries  "  go  into  any  way 

*  Even  in  the  use  of  the  several  possessive  pronouns  with  the  name  "  God," 
there  is  a  significant  gradation  among  the  synoptists :  the  closer  personal  ap- 
propriation of  God  as  his  Father,  by  the  word  My,  rather  than  Our  or  Your, 
being  greatest  in  the  newest  redaction  ;  occurring  in  IMark,  never ;  Luke, 
tkricc  ;  lilatthcw,  scvcntceyi  times.  In  the  fourth  Gospel  it  is  found  thirty-six 
times.  t  .Matt.  xv.  2i. 


586  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN  [Book  V. 

of  the  Gentiles  or  enter  into  any  city  of  the  Samaritans  ;"* 
not  because  he  was  untouched  by  traits  of  heathen  worth  and 
piety,  but  simply  because  the  promise  he  had  to  announce 
was  purely  national.  None  could  be  less  prepared  than  the 
apostles  themselves  when  Jesus  was  taken  from  them  and 
they  had  received  his  last  commands,  to  conceive  of  such  a 
change  as  x^ossible  :  "  Lord,  wilt  thou  at  this  time  restore  the 
kingdom  to /sraeZ  ?"  t  was  their  last  question.  Even  accord- 
ing to  Luke,  the  most  catholic  of  the  Christian  historiographers, 
nothing  short  of  a  divine  vision  could  assure  Peter  "  that  God 
is  no  respecter  of  persons  :  but  in  every  nation  he  that  feareth 
him  and  worketh  righteousness  is  acceptable  to  him  :"|  and 
but  for  the  supernatural  conversion  and  setting  apart  of  Saul 
of  Tarsus,  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  would  never  have  found 
voice  beyond  the  synagogue.  Nay,  so  little  was  any  wider 
field  laid  out,  that  when  Jesus  sent  forth  the  twelve  on  their 
first  missionary  excursion,  he  told  them  "  Ye  shall  not  have 
gone  through  the  cities  of  Israel  till  the  Son  of  Man  be  come."§ 
If  it  be  deemed  doubtful  whether  he  actually  used  these  words 
(which  are  not  part  of  the  "  common  tradition  "),  it  is  certain 
that  they  would  never  be  attributed  to  him  at  a  date  when 
they  were  already  falsified,  i.e.,  aj'ter  all  the  cities  of  Israel 
had  heard  the  word  which  had  gone  forth  from  Jerusalem. 
It  was  evidently  thought,  therefore,  that  the  Parusia  would 
be  upon  the  earth  ere  the  jDrobation  of  Israel  was  complete. 

It  follows  from  this  that  within  the  historical  contents  of 
the  ministry  of  Jesus  there  can  as  yet  have  been  no  anticipa- 
tion of  a  kingdom  of  God  embracing  others  than  the  "  children 
of  promise,"  or  substituting  others  for  them.  What  then  are 
we  to  say  to  the  Parable  of  the  Vineyard-owner,! |  whose 
tenants  withheld  his  rent  and  maltreated  his  agents,  one 
after  another,  crowning  their  iniquities  at  last  by  murdering 
his  son  and  heir  ?  and  of  the  retribution  with  which  he  visited 
them,  by  destroying  them  and  giving  the  vineyard  to  others  ? 
— so  that  the  "  stone  which  the  builders  rejected  was  made 
the  head-stone  of  the  corner."  Not  less  evident  is  the  i^ost 
eventum  vaticinatio  in  the  great  man's  supper,  from  which, 

*  Matt.  X.  5.  t  Acts  i.  6.         J  Acts  x.  34,  35.  §  Llatt.  x.  23. 

11  Mark  xii.  1-12  ;  Matt.  xxi.  33-46  ;  Luke  xx.  0-19. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  5S7 

when  all  was  ready,  the  invited  guests  absented  themselves  on 
various  idle  pleas  ;  till  he  was  provoked  to  fill  the  room  with 
the  common  people  from  the  highways,  and  to  say  that  "  not 
one  of  the  men  who  were  bidden  should  taste  of  his  supper."* 
In  these  parables,  the  kingdom  is  represented  as  actually 
transferred  to  a  new  people,  and  "  sinners  of  the  Gentiles  " 
become  the  adopted  "Israel  of  God:"  it  is  the  Pauline 
"  olive-tree,"  with  "  the  natural  branch  broken  off  and  cast 
away,"  and  the  "  wild-olive  branches  grafted  in."t  But  there 
is  another  parable  which,  in  correspondence  with  the  actual 
mixed  composition  of  the  Christian  community,  typifies  the 
reception  of  the  Gentiles  without  dispossession  of  the  Jews  : 
for  no  one  can  fail  to  see  in  the  prodigal  son,  with  his  wilful 
aberrations  and  degeneracy,  the  picture  of  the  unbridled 
heathen  populations,  conscious  at  last  of  their  own  degrada- 
tion and  ruin,  and  in  his  elder  brother,  still  at  home,  the  law- 
abiding  but  self-righteous  Jew,  secure  of  his  exclusive  inherit- 
ance, contemptuous  towards  the  reprobate's  folly  and  forfeiture, 
and  offended  at  the  father's  relenting  soul.  It  is  clearly  a 
picture  of  an  inward  strife  between  elements  in  the  Church, 
recently  discordant,  but  brought  at  last  to  the  true  secret  of 
God  in  the  reconciliation  of  alienated  hearts.  It  cannot  have 
been  elaborated  at  a  time  when  the  very  ground  of  disaffection 
had  not  yet  appeared,  when  neither  the  younger  son  had  yet 
come  to  himself  and  sought  again  the  embrace  of  the  father's 
arms,  nor  therefore  the  elder  betrayed  his  sullen  anger  and 
declared  that  he  "  would  not  come  in." 

The  idea  of  o^  postponed  MessialisJtip, — i.e.,  of  the  advent  of 
the  appointed  person,  with  yet  a  long  delay  of  his  accession 
to  his  dominion,  was  wholly  unknown  to  the  apocalyptic 
Judaism,  and  could  have  no  intelligible  meaning  to  the 
multitude  who  listened  to  Jesus  in  Galilee  or  Jerusalem.  It 
was  an  innovation  on  the  existing  doctrine,  devised  expressly 
to  fit  the  case  of  Jesus,  and  to  extort  from  the  crucifixion  and 
its  sequel  proof  instead  of  disproof  of  his  being  the  Christ  that 

*  Lukexiv.  lG-24.  In  INIatthew's  parallel  passage,  xxii.  7,  viz.,  the  additional 
words,  "  The  king  was  wroth  ;  and  he  sent  his  armies  and  destroj-cd  those  mur- 
derers [for  in  this  gospel  they  have  killed  his  messengers],  and  burned  their 
city,"  the  date  posterior  to  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  a.d.  70,  is  evident. 

t  Rom.  xi.  17,  scqq. 


588  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

should  come  in  power  from  heaven.  Not  till  the  epic  of  his 
life  had  passed  through  all  its  stages  and  changed  the  scene 
from  earth  to  heaven,  could  its  connected  rationale  take  the 
form  of  this  new  conception.  Yet,  again  and  again,  he  is 
represented  as  typifying  Messiah  by  some  great  one,  who 
absents  himself  from  his  domain  in  some  "  far  country,"  and 
returns  by  surprise  in  after  years  to  take  account  of  those  whom 
he  has  left  in  charge.  Thus,  the  attitude  of  the  disciples  is 
to  be  that  of  "men  looking  for  their  lord  when  he  shall 
return  from  the  marriage  feast ;  that  when  he  cometh  and 
knocketh  they  may  straightway  open  unto  him;  "*  a  concep- 
tion which  is  modified  and  expanded  into  the  parable  of  the 
ten  virgins,  waiting  with  their  lamps,  but  five  without  their 
oil,  till  the  bridegroom  arrives  for  the  marriage  feast  ;t  and  is 
again  recast  into  the  parable  of  the  Talents  delivered  to  his 
servants  by  "a  man  going  into  another  country,"  and  requir- 
ing them  meanwhile  to  turn  his  capital  for  him  to  good 
account.  J 

The  mark  of  unhistorical  character  in  this  and  similar  pas- 
sages is  the  invariable  resort  to  the  peculiar  idea  of  the  Mes- 
sianic personage  going  away  and  returning  after  an  absence  in 
another  country,  for  a  wedding,  a  business,  or  a  throne  in  the 
land  which  he  had  left.  But  for  this,  the  mere  lesson  of 
tvatcJifulness,  the  exhortation  to  stand  with  the  loins  girt  and 
the  lamps  burning,  might  well  enough  proceed  from  the  lij^s 
of  Jesus ;  for  the  kingdom  which  he  proclaimed  as  at  hand 
was  expected  to  burst  as  a  thunder-clap  upon  the  world ;  so 
that  none  would  be  ready  then  unless  they  were  ready  always. 
Many  an  expression  of  his,  therefore,  may  be  incorporated  in 
the  groundwork  of  these  passages  :  but  ere  they  reach  ug, 
they  have  taken  into  their  very  texture  the  accretions  of  Cj 
later  generation,  for  which  he  is  not  responsible. 

Some  of  these  accretions  carry  in  them  evidence  of  their 
unauthenticity.  It  is  plain,  for  instance,  that  the  first  pro- 
clamation  of  the   "kingdom"    as    "at  hand"  was  deemed 

*  Luke  xii.  36.  f  Matt.  xxv.  1-13. 

t  l\Iatt.  xxv.  14-30.  Cf.  Luke  xix.  12-27,  where  each  servant  receives  the 
same,  "  one  pound  "  ;  while  in  Matthew  the  sum  varies  with  each,  "  accord- 
ing to  his  ability."  The  same  idea  of  "  each  his  own  worl:  "  appears  also  in 
Mark  xiii.  34. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  5 89 

urgent,  and  compatible  only  with  a  very  short  respite.  The 
original  reckoning  probably  finds  expression  in  the  saying 
that  there  was  scarcely  time  for  the  missionary  disciples  to 
carry  the  notice  round  the  cities  of  Israel.  When  the  idea 
broke  upon  the  apostles  that  the  news  had  to  be  conveyed  to 
the  Gentiles  too,  the  term  was  extended  to  the  limits  of  the 
living  generation :  but  even  this,  I  conceive,  was  only  retro- 
spectively attributed  to  Jesus  himself.  It  was  no  exact  boun- 
dary at  the  touch  of  which  some  bell- stroke  told  the  hour  :  but 
the  watchers  said  to  one  another,  '  Is  there  no  sign  yet  ? 
surely  the  time  has  passed  :  why  tarrieth  the  bridegroom  on 
the  way  ? '  All  language  v/hich  betrays  this  state  of  mind, 
and  either  confesses  or  rebukes  wonder  and  distress  at  the 
delay  of  the  Parusia,  proclaims  its  own  date,  as  long  posterior 
to  the  living  ministry  of  Jesus,  if  not  to  the  apostolic  age 
itself.  Among  the  passages  affected  by  this  rule,  which  every 
reader  can  easily  apply  for  himself,  it  is  a  relief  to  find  the 
ver}^  objectionable  parable  of  the  "  Unjust  Judge  "  :  so  that  it 
may  be  dismissed  from  the  life  of  Jesus,  with  all  the  shameful 
ingenuity  expended  upon  it  by  commentators  and  apologists. 

Though  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Jesus  shared,  under 
whatever  personal  modifications,  the  Messianic  expectations  of 
his  compatriots,  it  is  plain  from  many  indications  that  he 
cannot  have  uttered,  in  their  present  form,  the  apocalyptic 
discourses  attributed  to  him  by  the  Synoptists.  The  most 
remarkable  of  these  is  said  to  have  been  elicited  by  the  two 
pairs  of  brothers,  Peter  and  Andrew,  and  James  and  John, 
asking  him  privately  why  he  had  just  answered  their  admira- 
tion of  tlie  Temple  by  predicting  its  destruction.*  His 
answer,  given  from  the  Mount  of  Olives,  with  the  holy  city  full 
in  view,  covers  much  more  than  their  question,  and  has  its 
climax  in  "  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  in  clouds  with 
power  and  great  glory,  and  tlio  sending  forth  of  his  angels  to 
gather  together  his  elect  from  the  four  winds,  from  the  utter- 
most part  of  the  earth  to  the  uttermost  part  of  heaven."  But, 
ere  this  terminus  is  reached,  a  series  of  premonitory  signs, 
physical  portents,    political   convulsions,    social   dissensions, 

*  Mark  xiii.  1-13  ;  Matt.  xxiv.  1-3G.     Cf.  x.  17-22.     Luke  xxi.  5-36.     Cf.. 
xvii.  23-31. 


590  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [BookV. 

religions  persecutions, — is  announced,  sufficiently  specific  in 
parts  to  carry  marks  of  time ;  and  wherever  this  occurs  they 
set  us  down  upon  a  scene  far  out  of  sight  or  conjecture  when 
Jesus  spoke.  Take,  for  example,  that  which  had  started  the 
whole  conversation, — the  destruction  of  the  Temple.  It  is 
conceivable  enough,  nay  certain,  that,  with  his  spiritual  idea 
of  the  relation  of  man  to  God,  and  under  the  recent  shock  of 
recoil  from  the  coarse  sights  and  sounds  of  the  place  deemed 
Holy,  Jesus  would  feel  it  impossible  for  the  Temple  system  to 
survive  and  pass  into  the  "  kingdom  to  come,"  and  might 
declare  it  doomed.  But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
foresight  of  the  concrete  particular  "  there  shall  not  be  left 
here  one  stone  upon  another,  which  shall  not  be  thrown 
down  "  :  the  thing  must  have  happened  before  that  could  be 
said.  It  belongs  to  the  same  category, — of  history  imagined 
back  into  prophecy, — with  the  sign  given  in  Luke,  "  When  ye 
see  Jerusalem  compassed  with  armies,  know  that  her  desola- 
tion is  at  hand."  In  the  omens  afforded  by  the  varieties  of 
tribulation,  wars,  earthquakes,  famines  and  pestilence,  it  is 
vain  to  seek  for  any  definite  chronology :  they  can  always  be 
looked  up  by  ingenious  eyes  in  an  area  so  vast  as  the  Eoman 
empire.  But  the  story  of  persecutions,  as  affecting  the  diffu- 
sion of  Christianity,  is  pretty  exactly  known  ;  and  the  descrip- 
tion of  disciples  brought  before  governors  and  Jcings  to  answer 
for  their  faith,  and  of  wide-spread  family  disruptions  through 
religious  severance,  with  martyrdoms  through  treachery  be- 
tween brother  and  brother,  father  and  son,  is  undoubtedly 
drawn  from  an  experience  rather  of  the  second  century  than 
of  the  first. 

Even  the  very  language  in  which  Jesus  is  said  to  disclaim 
knowledge  of  the  exact  date  of  the  Parusia  within  the  existing 
generation  contains  an  unfailing  mark  of  a  time  far  beyond 
it :  "of  that  day  or  that  hour  knoweth  no  one,  not  even  the 
angels  in  heaven,  neither  the  Son,  hut  the  Father."  *  As  I 
have  already  remarked,  this  antithetic  use  of  "  the  Son  "  and 
"  the  Father,"  with  the  definite  article,  was  unknown  till  the 
doctrine  of  the  person  of  Christ  assumed  its  theologic  form. 

In  short,  beyond  the  repeated  exhortation  to  "  Watch  "  and 

*  Mark.  xiii.  32 ;  Matt.  xxiv.  36. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  591 

stand  ready,  with  heart  loosened  from  the  cares  and  patient 
under  the  sufferings  of  "  the  latter  days,"  there  is  hardly  any- 
thing in  these  discourses  that  can  have  proceeded  from  Jesus 
himself :  and  the  more  you  try  to  save  as  historical,  the  less 
do  you  leave  to  him  of  the  character  of  a  true  prophet.     Had 
the  things  announced  happened  when  and  as  they  are  de- 
scribed, they  would  have  borne  him  a  witness  worth  preserv- 
ing.    But  since  the  generation  vanished  and  all  these  things 
did  not  come  to  pass,  since  Jerusalem  was  not  "  trodden  down 
of  the  Gentiles  "  merely  "  till  the  times  of  the  Gentiles  were 
fulfilled,"  since  the  courses  of  the  world  asserted  their  dura- 
bility and   disappointed  the  promise  of  the  Advent,  surely 
there  need  be  no  regret  in  letting  these  apocalyptic  leaves 
drop  from  the  blighted  tree  of  Israel's  national  life  and  lie 
upon   the   devastated   soil   of    Palestine.      They  are   Jewish 
growths  from  the  last  season  of  the  local  history,  born  from 
the  genius  and  faith  of  a  stormy  time,  some  decades  later  than 
the  earthly  life  of  Jesus ;  and  by  some  disciple  have  been 
seized  on  to  supplement  his  message  of  the  kingdom,  and  so 
worked  into  it  as  to  make  his  authority  seem  to  cover  the  whole. 
Besides  these  broad  and  conspicuous  instances  of  anachron- 
ism, many  minor  indications  of  a  time  too  late  for  any  uttered 
words  of  Jesus  will  strike  a  thoughtful  reader  of  the  Gospels, 
"VVe  are  told  of  excuses  made  by  hearers  attracted  to  him  yet 
unready   at   once   to   follow   him  ;  and   of   somewhat   harsh 
answers  to  their  natural  pleas,  the  wish  to  bid  adieu  to  the 
home  circle,*  the  duty  of  first  caring  for  a  father's  burial,  t 
Is  it  not  even  said,  "  If  any  man  cometh  unto  me,  andhateth 
not  his  own  father  and  mother  and  wife  and  children  and  breth- 
ren and  sisters,  yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be  my 
disciple  ?  "  +    The  evangelist,  living  amid  bitter  conflicts  between 
an  aggressive  Christianity  and  a  reigning  heathenism,  transfers 
the  requirements  and  the  passions  of  a  persecuting  society  to 
the  Galilean  ministry  ;  forgetting  that  Jesus  had  no  personal 
following  except  the  twelve,  and  asked  no  sacrifice  that  broke 
up  the  homes  of  Israel  or  the  worship  of  the  synagogue,  and 
no   devotion  but  of  a   heart   more   loving  and  a  will  more 
faithful   than  before.     These  passages  reflect  the  exactions 

*  Luke  ix.  Gl,  G2.     f  ^^att.  viii.  21,  22 ;  Luke  ix.  59,  GO.     *  Luke  xiv.  2G. 


592  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

and  the  irritation  of  struggling  missionaries  and  irreconcilable 
enthusiasms,  already  organized  and  entrenched  in  opposite 
camps.  Nay,  the  very  language  of  the  most  characteristic  of 
Christian  precepts  was  not  in  use  till  created  and  consecrated 
by  his  own  sacrifice,  and  could  not  have  passed  his  living  lips, 
"  If  any  man  would  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself,  and 
take  wp  his  cross  and  follow  me.'"* 

The  second  rule  of  historical  judgment  is  so  expressed  as  to 
leave  room  for  assent,  at  least  partial  and  suspended,  in  regard 
to  incidents  related  as  miraculous.  This  implies  that  I  do  not 
mean  to  base  the  exclusion  of  apparent  miracle  on  any  a  priori 
dictum  about  the  universality  of  Law.  The  uniformities 
which  regulate  our  expectations  we  have  got  to  know  by 
induction  from  experience ;  and  as  they  have  been  gathered 
from  past  facts,  they  are  always  open  to  control  by  future 
facts,  which  they  are  incompetent  to  forbid.  Our  stock  of 
known  laws,  not  being  a  closed  circle,  does  not  shut  out  an 
anomalous  phenomenon  as  impossible  and  entitle  us  to  say 
"It  did  not  happen."  What  it  does  authorize  us  to  say  is, 
"  Granting  its  occurrence,  you  can  never  tell  that  it  was  a 
miracle  ;"  for  there  is  always  room  for  the  unexpected  in  the 
gaps  of  undetermined  law  ;  and  when  assigned  to  its  place 
there,  it  l)elongs  to  the  sphere  of  Nature,  and  not  to  what  is 
beyond  nature,  as  yon  ^\c\,nt  jonr  miracle  to  be.  This  consid- 
eration, which  deprives  what  are  called  "  signs  and  wonders  " 
of  all  religious  validity  and  restores  them  to  the  bosom  of  the 
world,  I  am  the  less  disposed  to  press,  because  it  accepts  from 
the  theologians  the  false  postulate  that  the  cosmic  causalities 
and  the  Divine  are  mutually  exclusive,  and  that  you  cannot, 
be  sure  of  the  touch  of  God  till  you  are  outside  of  nature. 

"Without  being  prejudged  as  impossible,  a  reported  miracle 
may,  nevertheless,  be  incredible  for  the  same  reason  that 
induces  disbelief  in  many  an  alleged  commonplace  incident, 
viz.,  the  want  of  adequate  evidence  :  and  it  is  on  this  ground 
alone  that  the  historical  validity  of  the  evangelists'  narratives, 
whatever  be  their  contents,  must  be  estimated.  That  for 
dift'erent  orders  of  phenomena  there  are  various  gradations  of 
evidence  requisite  as  conditions  of  belief  is  denied  by  no  one  : 

*  Matt.  xvi.  2i  ;  x.  33 ;  Liike  ix.  23. 


Chap.  I.J  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  595 

ox  that  the  chief  difference  in  this  respect  lies  in  the  con- 
formity or  inconformity  of  the  seeming  fact  with  expecta- 
tions warranted  by  usage.  Even  of  an  event  presented  to  our 
immediate  perception  we  sometimes  say,  if  it  be  starthng» 
"  I  could  hardly  believe  my  eyes  :"  and  we  keep  our  accept- 
ance, or  our  interpretation,  of  it  in  suspense,  till  we  have 
taken  special  precautions  against  illusion.  At  one  remove 
from  personal  experience,  as  when  we  only  hear  the  same 
thing  from  another,  the  element  of  doubt  is,  in  any  case, 
doubled ;  and  if  there  be  less  security  for  our  informant's 
accuracy  or  veracity  than  for  our  own,  the  ratio  of  increase 
is  higher.  Every  link  in  the  transmission  contributes  its 
increment  of  uncertainty,  always  enlarging  so  long  as  the 
tradition  is  oral,  then  arrested  when  consigned  to  a  written 
text  and  stored  among  the  sources  of  history,  yet  by  this  very 
process  exposed  to  a  new  possibility,  by  which  chronicles  are 
revised,  filled  in,  and  painted  up.  If  in  a  court  of  justice  it 
is  often  barely  possible  to  elicit  the  truth,  where  only  recent 
facts  are  under  investigation,  and  contemporary  documents 
are  accessible  and  living  witnesses  are  examined  and  cross- 
examined,  and  every  safeguard  against  falsity  is  provided  of 
which  human  fear  and  conscience  admit,  we  may  form  some 
conception  of  what  we  have  to  ask  from  historic  tradition, 
before  we  can  reconstruct  in  thought  the  true  picture  of  a 
life  such  as  that  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  such  a  growth  as 
that  of  the  Christian  Church.  We  cannot  claim  to  have  any 
known  personal  testimony  to  the  contents  of  the  ministry  of 
Jesus  ;  our  earliest  witness  being  the  convert  "  born  out  of 
due  time;"  and  our  dependence  for  the  previous  time  being 
on  the  synoptical  gospels,  which  did  not  come  into  ascertained 
existence  till  the  second  or  third  generation  after  the  events 
they  relate,  and  then  doubtless  embodied  simply  the  mixed 
popular  tradition  moulded  by  memory,  reverence,  and  faith, 
in  their  period  of  puru  l)ut  uncritical  enthusiasm.  While  it  is 
thus  impossible  to  reach  any  original  attestation  which  we 
can  appreciate  as  adequate  to  substantiate  the  tales  that 
would  be  incredible  today,  notliing  is  more  certain  than  that, 
in  the  state  of  mind  out  of  which  the  Church  was  born, 
miracles  would  have  been  freely  believed,  whether  they  had 


594  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN  [Book  V. 

really  happened  or  not.  The  known  growth  of  the  doctrine 
respectmg  the  person  of  Christ  through  its  several  stages,  as 
traced  in  the  foregoing  chapters,  is  itself  an  example,  on  a 
large  scale,  of  the  tendency  which  wrought  the  whole  story  of 
Jesus  into  supernatural  form.  And  though  the  mode  of 
transformation  cannot  be  traced  in  detail,  the  preconceptions 
and  influences  of  the  age  supplied  inducements  to  it  and 
facilities  for  it  which  serve  to  explain  it. 

Thus  the  belief  in  demoniacal  possession  already  introduced 
preternatural  agents  on  to  the  stage  of  common  life,  and 
assigned  to  them  as  their  province  a  large  class  of  nervous 
disorders  peculiarly  dependent  on  conditions  of  mental  excite- 
ment or  repose,  and  often  amenable  to  sympathetic  control  by 
an  intense  and  powerful  personality :  and  wherever  a  healing 
influence  seemed  to  flow  from  such  a  centre,  the  remission, 
like  the  access,  of  the  disease,  would  necessarily  be  referred  to 
the  mediation  of  the  spiritual  world.  So  far,  there  is  a  real 
ground  for  the  old  rationalistic  explanation  of  miracles  as  mis- 
interpreted natural  facts.  In  other  cases,  a  forgotten  parable 
is  petrified  into  an  unmeaning  miracle.  We  cannot,  for 
instance,  for  a  moment  doubt  the  purport  of  this  short 
symbolic  lesson  :  "A  certain  man  had  a  fig-tree  jDlanted  in  his 
vineyard  :  and  he  came  seeking  fruit  thereon,  and  found  none. 
And  he  said  to  his  vine-dresser.  Behold,  these  three  years  I 
come  seeking  fruit  on  this  fig-tree  and  find  none :  cut  it  down : 
why  cumbereth  it  the  ground  ?  And  he  answering  saith  unto 
him,  Lord,  let  it  alone  this  year  also,  till  I  shall  dig  about  it 
and  dung  it :  and  if  it  bear  fruit  thenceforth,  well :  but  if  not, 
thou  shalt  cut  it  down."*  Here,  the  same  Israel  which  had 
been,  with  the  Psalmist,  "  the  vine  brought  by  God's  hand  out 
of  Egypt,"!  and,  with  Paul,  his  "good  olive  tree,"|  appears 
as  the  fig-tree ;  and  the  complaint  of  its  barrenness,  heard 
already  from  the  lips  of  many  a  pro^iliet,  is  declared  to  have 
brought  disappointment  to  its  climax.  '  See,  the  sunshine 
visits  it  for  the  last  time  in  vain :  cut  it  down,  and  let  it 
wither.  Israel  is  cast  away.  Yet,  no !  let  there  be  one  re- 
lenting more :  and  though  the  probation  that  should  have 
been  final  has  but  brought  the  crowning  failure,  and  the  most 

*  Luke  xiii.  6-9.  t  Ixxx.  8.  J  Rom.  xi.  24. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  A  IVA  Y.  595 

glorious  season  of  promise  has  been  thrown  away,  grant  but  a 
supplementary  year,  and  multiply  the  husbandman's  faithful- 
ness and  care,  and  perchance  there  is  yet  life  enough  to  ripen 
some  fruit  among  the  leaves.'  Here  is  plainly  shadowed  forth 
the  mission  cf  the  Spirit,  as  the  sequel  to  the  personal  appeal 
of  Christ,  suspending  the  rejection  of  "  the  people  of  God,"  and 
giving  them  the  apostolic  age,  as  one  chance  of  mercy  more. 

The  parable,  thus  rounded  off  to  its  close,  would  not  be  in- 
telligible till  the  descent  and  mission  of  the  Holy  Spirit  had 
published  the  reprieve,  and  extended  the  term  of  repentance 
for  Israel.     It  describes  the  dealings  of  God  as  they  appeared 
to  Paul  and  his  evangelist  Luke  after  the  middle  of  the  first 
century.     Suppose  it  conceived  and  spoken  on  the  verge  of  the 
last  teachings  in  the  Temple  in  which  Jesus  pressed  home  his 
conclusive  test  on  the  conscience  of  Jerusalem,  it  must  have 
been  silent  about  any  appendix  of  mercy,  and  have  stopped 
short  with  the  sentence,  "  cut  it  down,  why  cumbereth  it  the 
ground?"     Did   Jesus    then,   on   his    morning    walk    from 
Bethany,  charged  with  his  message  that  the  hour  of  ingather- 
ing was  nigh,  think  within  himself,  as  Zion  came  in  sight, 
*  "Wliat  fruit  will  be  ready  in  this  favoured  orchard  of  the 
Lord '?  will  he  find  there  "  trees  of  righteousness,"  "  the  plant- 
ing of  his  hand  ?  "  or,  is  the  foliage  so  showy  because  the  pro- 
mised harvest  is  all  dropped  ?     Alas  !  should  it  be  so  (and  this 
day  may  test  it),  Israel  will  be  doomed  as  a  dead  branch  ere 
night.'     Tliis  half  of  Luke's  parable  would  cover  all  that  was 
then  within  view,  and  is  the  probable  ground  of  the  strange 
story  in  the  other  synoptists,  viz.,  that  Jesus,  as  he  approached 
the  city,  being  hungry,  searched  for  figs  on  an  actual  tree  by  " 
the  wayside,  and  found  none  because  it  was  not  the  season  for 
figs  ;  and  notwithstanding  this  good  reason  for  its  barrenness, 
he  was  provoked  to  doom  the  tree  by  an  imprecation  never  to 
bear   fruit   again ;    and   it   withered   away,   either   instantly 
(Matt.)  or  before  evening  (Mark).*  The  two  synoptists, having 
lost  the  parable  with  its  clew,  turned  its  broken  bits  into  an 
unworthy  and  senseless  miracle  ;  Luke,  having  recovered  it, 
carried  it  out  beyond  its  date  of  utterance,  by  a  supplement 
winding  up  with  long-suffering  instead  of  curse. 

•  Matt.  xxi.  18-20;  Mark  xi.  12-14,  20,  21. 

Q  Q   2 


596  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

The  true  sense  of  many  a  reported  miracle  plainly  lies  in  its 
symbolical  meaning.  Why  is  it  that  the  cures  wrought  at  a 
distance  by  aword  are  accorded  to  the  Heathen  faith  of  the 
Syrophcenician  mother  afflicted  about  her  daughter,*  and  the 
Koman  centurion  about  his  servant,!  but  to  show  what  healing 
is  ready  at  call  for  "  them  that  are  afar  off"?  The  feeding  of 
the  multitudes,  already  allegorized  in  the  fourth  gospel,  the 
walking  on  the  sea  with  the  saving  of  the  sinking  Peter,  the 
transfiguration  comj^leting  and  crowning  the  trio  of  immortal 
prophets  beginning  with  Law  and  ending  with  Love,  speak  for 
themselves  in  tones  deeper  and  sweeter  than  the  even  prose  of 
history.  Nor  can  we  mistake,  in  such  episodes  as  that  of  the 
Temptation,  the  translation  into  objective  drama  of  inward 
spiritual  experiences  of  discipline  and  conflict.  Li  the  presence 
of  these  indications,  and  the  absence  of  definite  contemporary 
testimony,  there  seems  no  excuse  for  seeking  explanations  of 
the  gospel  narrative  beyond  the  historical  and  moral  conditions 
of  the  time. 

The  application  of  our  third  rule,  excluding  what  is  incon- 
gruous with  the  personal  characteristics  of  Jesus,  is  a  much 
more  difficult  and  delicate  task  for  the  critic  than  he 
encounters  with  the  other  two  ;  nor  will  his  handling  of 
it,  however  cautious,  bring  conviction  to  those  who  require 
more  definite  grounds  of  belief  than  are  afforded  by  harmony 
and  disharmony  in  the  shades  of  character.  And  yet,  to 
those  who  cannot  help  being  affected  by  such  phenomena, 
there  is  nothing  more  persuasive.  Several  traits  which  might 
have  been  brought  under  this  head  of  incongruity  I  have 
preferred  to  treat,  for  the  sake  of  more  exactitude,  under  that 
of  anachronism  :  but  the  self-proclamation  of  meekness  and 
lowliness  of  heart,  the  pompous  self-elevation  above  Jonah 
and  Solomon  and  the  temple,  the  joy  to  think  how  blessed  are 
tlie  eyes  that  see  him,  are  just  as  much  out  of  keeping  with 
the  personality  as  with  the  time  to  which  they  are  referred. 
The  unhistoric  character  of  such  features  cannot  be  fully 
appreciated  till  they  are  seen  side  by  side  with  the  certainly 
historical  ;  but,  in  passing  to  this,  an  additional  sample  or 

*  IMatt.  XV.  21-28  ;  ]\Iark  vii.  25-30. 
I  Llatt.  viii.  5-13 ;  Luke  vii.  2-10. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  ^97 

two  may  be  given,  for  the  sake  of  completing  our  scheme  of 
conchisions. 

Few  readers,  probably,  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Momit  would 
be  seriously  disturbed  if  an  authoritative  manuscript  were 
found,  the  text  of  which  did  not  contain  this  verse :  "  Give 
not  that  which  is  holy  unto  the  dogs,  neither  cast  your  pearls 
before  swine,  lest  haply  they  trample  them  under  their  feet, 
and  turn  and  rend  you."*  The  tone  of  u/Bptc  is  not  much 
relieved  by  the  discussion  raised  regarding  the  persons  de- 
scribed as  "dogs"  and  "swine."  I  take  it  for  certain  that 
if  this  injunction  came  from  the  lips  of  Jesus,  its  opprobrious 
terms,  conformably  with  contemporary  Jewish  usage,  could 
be  understood  only  of  the  Gentiles,  and  would  extend  his 
sanction  to  the  most  malign  manifestations  of  Israelitish 
intolerance.  That  such  an  ebullition  of  scorn  and  insult 
should  proceed  from  him  wdio  extolled  in  the  alien  "  a  faith 
which  he  had  not  found,  no,  not  in  Israel,"  and  who  selected 
a  Samaritan  as  the  ideal  expounder  of  the  second  great  com- 
mandment, is  utterly  incredible.  The  language  has  its  parallel, 
and  doubtless  the  indication  of  its  date,  in  the  warnings  to 
the  Churches  of  Asia  (particularly  that  of  Thyatira),t  con- 
tained in  the  prologue  to  the  Apocalypse,  guarding  them 
against  forms  of  antinomian  corruption  which  had  come  upon 
the  Church  of  the  second  century  from  the  growth  of  gnostic 
philosophy  and  the  misuse  of  Pauline  theology.  The  verse, 
wholly  unconnected  with  its  context,  is  doubtless  one  of  the 
latest  interpolations  of  the  most  mixed  of  all  the  gospels  ;  and 
expresses  the  feeling  of  passionate  disgust  which  the  encroach- 
ment of  heathen  licence  upon  the  purity  of  the  Church 
awakened  in  its  true  pastors  and  people. 

Not  less  repugnant  to  the  spirit  of  Jesus  than  this  reputed 
fierceness  against  the  foreigner  is  the  opposite  irritation 
attributed  to  him  by  Luke  against  the  obduracy  of  his  own 
people.  In  such  haste  is  the  evangelist  to  give  prominence 
to  this  feature  that  he  opens  the  Galilean  ministry  with  a 
striking  scene,  of  really  later  date,  in  the  synagogue  of  his 
native  Nazareth.  When  the  carpenter's  son,  whom  the 
villagers  had  known  from  a  child,  comes  before  them  as  a 

•  Matt.  v-ii.  6.  t  Hev.  ii.  18,  scoq.     Cf.  Phil.  iii.  2,  3  ;  Jude  17-23. 


598  THE   DIVINE   IN   THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

young  prophet  and  "  proclaims  the  acceptable  year  of  the 
Lord,"  it  might  seem  encouragement  enough  that  "  they 
wondered  at  the  glorious  words  that  proceeded  out  of  his 
mouth,"  and  recognized  in  him  the  divine  glow  which  he 
could  not  have  caught  at  home.  But  instead  of  leaving  the 
seed  to  sink  into  their  hearts  and  find  its  root  in  silence,  he 
seizes  upon  the  angry  text  that  "  no  prophet  is  acceptable  in 
his  own  country,"  and  launches  forth  into  reproaches  against 
the  perverseness  of  Israel,  so  that  Elijah  had  to  carry  the 
compassion  of  God  to  a  widow  of  Sidon,  and  Elisha  to  a  leper 
of  Syria.*  Is  this  "  the  servant  of  God,  who  shall  neither 
strive  nor  cry,  who  will  not  break  the  bruised  reed  or  quench 
the  smoking  flax  "  ?  f  Is  not  such  an  outburst,  addressed  to 
parents,  elders,  neighbours,  lifelong  companions,  highly  pro- 
vocative,— the  utterance  more  of  temper  than  of  love '?  The 
parallel  accounts  in  the  other  synoptists  not  only  are  silent 
about  any  such  address,  but  by  their  remark  that  in  j^resence 
of  the  local  unbelief  "he  could  do  no  mighty  work,"  imply 
his  mood  to  have  been  one  rather  of  despondency  than  of 
aggression.  Pfleiderer's  suggestion  may  well  be  accepted : 
that  Luke,  writing  at  a  time  when  the  Gentile  preponderance 
in  Christendom  had  finally  alienated  and  embittered  the 
Jewish  feeling  by  the  wrenching  away  of  the  national 
"  election,"  worked  up  the  Nazarene  incident  into  a  miniature, 
on  the  village  scale,  of  the  passionate  resentment  of  the  old 
Israel  towards  the  successful  usurper  of  its  promises.]; 

In  another  instance  Luke  is  betrayed  into  the  same  in- 
congruit3\  He  tells  us  of  the  acceptance  by  Jesus  of  an 
invitation  to  dinner  at  a  Pharisee's  house,  and  reports  what 
passed  at  table.  Perceiving  his  host's  surprise  at  his  seating 
himself  without  caring  for  the  usual  washing  of  the  hands, 
Jesus  breaks  at  once  into  the  following  unsparing  rebuke  : 
"  Now  do  ye  Pharisees  cleanse  the  outside  of  the  cup  and  of 
the  platter,  but  your  inward  part  is  full  of  extortion  and 
wickedness.  Ye  foolish  ones  !  did  not  he  that  made  the  out- 
side make  the  inside  also?  Howbeit,  give  alms  of  such 
things  as   ye  have :  and,  behold,  all  things  are  clean  unto 

*  Luke  iv.  16-30.  t  Is.  xlii.  1-3  ;  Matt.  xii.  18-21. 

%  Das  Urcliristenthum,  431. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  599 

you,"*  The  invective,  thus  starting  from  the  usages  of  the 
table,  then  opens  out  into  a  general  assault  upon  the 
Pharisaic  hypocrisy  and  ambition,  winding  up  with  the 
denunciation,  ''Woe  unto  you!  for  ye  are  as  tombs  that 
appear  not,  and  the  men  that  walk  over  them  know  it  not." 
Nor  is  this  enough  :  an  expostulation  from  "  a  lawyer  "  whose 
class  feeling  was  touched  by  the  bitter  words,  only  brought 
down  a  storm  of  more  scathing  indignation,  such  as  must 
inevitably  have  broken  up  any  assembly  of  human  beings  that 
had  not  a  hundredfold  the  patience  of  Job.  But  just  here  the 
evangelist,  in  the  excitement  of  his  sympathetic  anger,  over- 
reaches himself,  and  betrays  his  trespass  beyond  all  historical 
restraints  ;  for  he  makes  Jesus  close  his  philippic  with  that 
quotation  from  the  apocalyptic  "Wisdom  of  God,"  which 
brings  down  the  crimes  against  the  prophets  to  the  death  of 
Zachariah  in  the  siege  of  Jerusalem  by  Titus.  It  is  as 
evident  as  it  is  natural  that  these  antipharisaic  discourses  are 
throughout  tinctured  with  the  feeling  of  the  post-apostoKc 
time  when  the  breach  between  the  Church,  now  regarding 
itself  as  the  true  Israel  of  God,  and  the  Jews  exasperated  by 
its  apostasy,  was  complete  and  embittered.  Embedded  in 
these  discourses  there  may  be  many  a  pithy  saying,  and  many 
a  piercing  rebuke,  that  really  came  from  the  lips  of  Jesus ; 
but  the  tone  of  intense  passion  pervading  them,  with  total 
disregard  of  all  times  and  seasons,  is  utterly  at  variance  with 
the  ruling  affections  and  inward  repose  of  his  spirit.  Not 
that  his  inexhaustible  heart  of  mercy,  open  to  forgiveness 
seventy  times  in  a  day,  required  any  Quaker-like  suppression 
of  righteous  anger,  whenever  either  the  guilty  conscience  was 
secretly  angry  with  itself,  or  it  was  needful  to  snatch  the  mis- 
guided multitude  from  the  hands  of  sanctimonious  impostors, 
and  clear  their  vision  to  see  for  themselves  what  is  true  and 
right.  But  such  moral  enthusiasm  peals  forth  in  the  august 
tones  of  wounded  justice,  not  in  the  shrill  rage  of  mere 
vituperation  :  and  it  would  either  decline  the  relation  between 
host  and  guest,  or  reserve  itself  till  some  less  offensive  occasion 
permitted  its  expression. 

There  are  perhaps  few  sincere  Christians  who  have  not  at 

•  Luke  xi.  3Q-41. 


6oo  THE   DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

times  been  distressed  by  the  strange  juxtaposition  in  the  same 
discom'se,  and  even  in  the  same  precepts  of  Jesus,  of  ideal 
elevation  and  of  low  self-interest,  a  juxtaposition  psychologi- 
cally impossible  and  therefore  ethically  libellous.  His  dis- 
ciples are  to  be  absolutely  disinterested,  shedding  their 
treasures  of  love  and  succour  in  unstinted  measure  upon 
others,  "hoping  for  nothing  again";  assured  that  they 
would  have  their  reivard  from  their  Father  in  Heaven :  they 
are  to  reserve  their  hospitable  and  generous  offices  for  the 
poor,  the  lame,  the  blind,  guarding  themselves  against  the 
possibility  of  any  return  ;  and  they  "  shall  he  recompensed  at 
the  resurrection  of  the  just":  their  alms,  and  fasts  and 
prayers  are  to  be  private  and  unseen,  lest  they  should  be 
tainted  by  the  prospect  of  personal  good  ;  and  "  the  Father 
who  seeth  in  secret  will  reicard  them  openly.''''  This  does 
not  seem  to  rise  above  the  level  of  an  old  maxim,  "  He  that 
hath  pity  on  the  poor  lendeth  to  the  Lord."*  If  it  be 
thought  that  the  futurity  of  the  compensation  sanctifies  it, 
even  this  feature  is  not  always  preserved ;  as  when  modesty 
and  humility  of  behaviour  are  recommended  as  the  surest 
means  of  avoiding  rebuffs  and  obtaining  advancement. t  The 
state  of  mind  that  would  be  formed  by  surrendering  life  to 
the  play  of  these  incentives  would  be  utterly  at  variance  with 
all  that  Jesus  loved  and  was,  and  could  produce  only  a  hollow 
mimicry  of  his  spiritual  attitude  towards  God  and  man. 
Such  righteousness  is  but  a  long-headed  economy  ;  an  invest- 
ment in  a  deferred  annuity  or  the  purchase  of  a  reversionary 
interest  by  one  who  can  dispense  with  dividends  each  quarter 
day. 

These  incongruities  do  but  illustrate  the  irreversible  law, 
that  tlie  supreme  lights  of  the  saintly  conscience  retain  their 
purity  only  in  the  souls  on  which  they  dawn,  and  become 
dimmed  on  their  transmission  into  the  next  and  lower  stratum 
of  minds  ;  so  that  no  Divine  revelation  can  be  delivered  into 
human  keeping  without  being  shorn  of  its  first  lustre  by 
the  clouded  region  through  which  it  has  to  pass.  Jesus  him- 
self was  not  untouched  by  the  consciousness  of  this  and  of 
the  loneliness  in  which  it  left  him  :  "he  sighed  deeply  in  his 

*  Prov.  xix.  17.  t  Luke  xiv.  8-11. 


Chap.  I.]  THE    VEIL    TAKEN  AWAY.  6oi 

spirit  and  said,  '  \Vliy  doth  this  generation  seek  a  sign  ?  '  "* 
*'  He  turned  and  said,  '  Ye  know  not  what  manner  of  spirit  ye 
are  of.'  "t  We  have  to  step  downwards  from  himself  to  the 
apostles,  and  again  from  the  apostles  to  the  Church,  till  the 
image  becomes  confused,  and  its  living  expression  almost 
fades  from  view.  Yet  there  are  discernible  a  few  ineffaceable 
lineaments,  which  could  belong  only  to  a  figure  unique  in 
grace  and  majesty. 

*  Mark  viii.  12.  +  Luke  is.  55. 


602 


CHAPTEE    11. 

'IHE    CHRISTIAN    RELIGION    PERSONALLY   REALIZED. 

The  portions  of  the  synoptic  texts  which  remain  on  hand, 
after  severing  what  the  foregoing  rules  exclude,  can  by  no 
means  be  accepted  en  masse  as  all  equally  trustworthy.  They 
are  relieved  simply  of  the  impossible,  and  contain  only  what 
might  he  true.  But  not  everything  that  might  be  true  turns 
out  really  to  be  so  ;  and  from  the  possible,  i.e.,  that  which  is 
consistent  with  the  known  conditions,  we  have  still  to  collect 
the  actual,  before  the  historic  image  issues  from  the  haze. 
Nor  can  this  be  effected  by  any  mechanical  process  of  further 
partition.  It  might  seem  at  first  sight  a  safe  resolve  to  take 
one's  stand  upon  the  common  tradition  as  unimpeached  and 
trebly  firm.  Yet  who  would  say  that  an  uncontradicted  story, 
though  it  be  thrice,  or  a  hundred  times  told,  must  be  judged 
free  from  all  that  is  fabulous  ?  Is  it  even  conceivable  that, 
after  its  oral  repetition  through  thirty  years,  its  litera  scrvpta 
should  at  last  present  an  exact  photograph  of  the  reality  ? 
Especially  if  that  reality  should  be,  not  a  visible  and  palpable 
event,  but  the  "  winged  words  "  of  a  dialogue  or  a  discourse, 
can  we  say  that  popular  rumour  is  a  phonograph  which  will 
redeliver  it  to  the  next  generation  '?  And  as,  on  the  one  hand, 
truth,  by  its  very  diffusion,  may  be  dissolved  away  in  the 
media  of  its  transmission,  so,  on  the  other  hand,  may  here 
and  there  a  precious  shred  of  it  alight  unnoticed  and  float 
down  on  some  hidden  rill  and  turn  up  at  last  under  the  eye 
of  a  far-off  observer,  who  brings  it  unspoiled  to  the  light.  So 
that  there  may  possibly  be  error  in  the  common  tradition 
from  which  the  special  may  be  free  ;  and  what  is  peculiar  to 
any  one  synoptist  is  not  necessarily  to  be  distrusted  as  an 
editorial  comment  merely  for  want  of  corroboration.  It  must 
be  judged  by  considerations  gathered  from  the  whole  field  of 
probabilities. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      603 

Thus,  at  the  veiy  outset,  we  must  assent  to  Mark  alone  in 
accepting  the  Baptist's  preaching  as  the  real  "  Beginning  of 
the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,"*  the  first  known  awakening  in 
him  of  a  conscious  call  to  speak  and  act  as  a  witness  of  Divine 
things  to  his  compatriots.  Whatever  may  have  preceded  it 
in  the  crypts  that  underlie  the  pavement  of  history  is  as  "  the 
secret  of  God,"  read  hy  no  human  eye;  but  now,  it  hreaks 
into  a  light  startling  to  himself,  and,  it  may  be,  visible  to 
others  in  a  gracious  kindling  of  new  life  in  his  features  and 
his  form.  Urged  to  seek  the  stern  prophet  of  the  desert  by 
the  same  wave  of  enthusiasm  which  was  carrying  multitudes 
to  the  banks  of  Jordan,  he  no  doubt  meant  what  they  meant, 
with  only  the  keener  tension  and  the  larger  wonder  of  a  soul 
more  rare.  He  too  came  in  faith  that  "  the  times  of  refresh- 
ing from  the  presence  of  the  Lord  "f  were  at  hand,  and  sprang 
forward  with  joy  to  meet  them.  But  how  was  it  checked 
w^hen  he  stood  before  the  tall  figure  and  the  piercing  eye  of  the 
rugged  Eremite,  and  was  shaken  by  the  peals  of  his  command- 
ing voice  !  Short  and  sharp  as  broken  thunder  came  the 
bursts  of  rebuke,  of  precept,  and  of  terror  :  '  Ye  viperous  genera- 
tion !  do  you  bring  your  poison  to  me  ?  am  I  to  wash  you 
back  into  children  of  Abraham  ?  repent :  reverse  your  ways 
this  very  hour  :  judgment  is  at  your  heels,  to  sweep  you  as 
chaff  into  unquenchable  fire ! '  Such  was  the  Baptist's 
message  of  the  kingdom  of  God  :  the  /Ethiopian  must  change 
his  skin,  and  the  leopard  his  spots,  or  be  overtaken  by  the 
last  despair :  it  was  all  warning  and  exaction,  addressed  to 
fear :  not  a  word  of  promise,  not  an  invitation  of  hope  :  the 
only  possibility  offered  being  the  bare  escape  from  the  axe, 
the  winnowing  fan,  the  consuming  wrath. 

That  within  the  sensitive  conscience  of  Jesus  also  these 
peremptory  tones  would  ring  like  reverberations  of  Sinai,  and 
pervade  him  with  an  answering  awe,  we  may  well  believe. 
But  did  they  adequately  render  his  preconception  of  the  reign 
of  righteousness?  did  they  picture  a  scene  which  he  could 
rejoice  to  see  ?  did  they  speak  to  the  affection  which  chietiy 
made  up  his  relation  to  the  infinite  Father,  or  only  to  that 
with  which  he  hid    his    face  from  the   tremendous  Judge  ? 

*  Mark  i.  1.  t  Acts  iii.  19. 


6o4  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

Hither  lie  had  been  drawn,  "  lookmg  for  the  consolation  of 
Israel,"  and  expecting  to  meet  its  foregleams  in  the  prophet's 
vision :  and  this  stormy  prelude  interposed  a  band  of  cloud 
and  lightning  which  blotted  out  the  eternal  sunshine  and  shut 
up  the  heavens.  In  his  tender  humility  he  too  trembled  at 
the  message,  and  went  down  with  the  publicans  and  sinners 
into  the  waters  of  repentance.  But  it  is  not  thus  alone  thai 
the  pure  in  heart  can  see  their  God  :  the  light  of  his  counte- 
nance refuses  to  be  hid  :  and  as  he  emerged  from  the  stream, 
the  heavens  opened  to  him,  and  the  love  of  God  came  hover- 
ing down  upon  him  to  choose  him  as  its  vehicle  to  the  hearts 
of  men.  It  was  the  moment  of  self-dedication  to  the  divine 
Hfe, — not  indeed  in  the  mimic  form  of  self-perfectioning,  but 
in  the  true  passion  of  self- surrender  as  the  organ  of  a  supreme 
possessing  holiness  and  mercy, — a  crisis  therefore  not  so 
much  of  personal  resolve,  as  of  delivery  into  the  disposing 
hand  of  God,  to  bear  witness  of  the  nearness  of  holy  things 
and  the  greatness  of  the  Divine  promise.  Such  an  inaugura- 
tive  moment  would  hold  the  same  place  in  his  life  that  is 
marked  in  subsequent  Christian  experience  by  what  is  called 
"  conversion,"  and  is  seldom  if  ever  absent  from  minds  rightly 
maturing  their  spiritual  history. 

As  he  stood  apart,  and  watched  the  mixed  crowd,  Pharisees 
and  Sadducees,  soldiers  and  traders  of  the  city,  husbandmen 
and  labourers  from  the  fields,  thronging  the  banks,  or  hurry- 
ing to  the  stream,  with  tumult  of  competing  voices,  he  would 
see  in  them,  even  in  their  haste  to  be  cleansed  of  sin,  enough 
for  compassionate  sympathy  and  some  gentler  reception  than 
the  Baptist's  severe  welcome.  Yet  the  question  would  haunt 
him,  when  he  looked  across  the  margin  of  this  '  last  age,' 
'  Are  these  then  the  colonists  reserved  for  the  commonwealth 
of  God  ?  are  they  congenial  elements  of  a  society  where  all 
shall  be  holy "?  cruel  it  would  be  to  deal  with  them  as  chaff  to 
be  driven  from  the  floor :  but  are  they  really  samples  of  the 
precious  wheat  that  is  to  fill  the  divine  garners '?  '  They  do 
not  as  yet  fit  in  with  his  pure  and  saintly  vision  :  something 
more  is  needed  than  setting  them  right  with  their  broken 
law  :  there  must  be  an  ulterior  stage  to  the  transformation 
which  the  Baptist  institutes,  if  the  dust  of  this  world  is  not 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      605 

to  settle  on  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and  leave  it  without  its 
green  pastures  and  still  waters.  It  is  no  wonder  if  such 
doubts  and  longing  sense  of  incompleteness  oppressed  the 
spirit  of  Jesus,  and  drove  him  to  the  desert  to  resolve  them, 
and  settle  accounts  between  his  traditional  preconceptions 
and  his  personal  faith. 

That   lonely   conflict    had  no  human  witness,  and   would 
certainly  remain  a  secret  confidence  between  himself  and  the 
Searcher  of  hearts.     It  would  be  betrayed  only  in  "  the  power 
of  spirit"  with  which  he  issued  from  it.     The  oldest  reporter 
left  it  in  its  obscurity  as  a  time  of  inward  trial :  the  other 
synoptists,  affecting  a  fuller  knowledge  of  its  contents,  filled 
them  in  from  their  own  theory  of  his  state  of  mind.     Had  he 
already,  as  they  imagined,  looked  on  himself  as  Messiah  and 
been  invested  with  the  corresponding  powers,  while  yet  some- 
thing told  him  that  they  were  not  to  be  wielded  till  he  had 
received  an  ulterior  commission,  then  the  "  temptation  "  would 
have  been  to  a  premature  self-assertion  of  his  claims,  and  a 
free  use  of  his  control  over  men  and  nature  for  the  supply  of 
his  wants  or  the  display  of  his  prerogatives.     This,  in  the 
view  of  the  first  and  third  evangelists,  was  the  Satanic  pro- 
posal :  '  Are  you  the  Christ  that  is  to  reign  ?  then  dally  no 
more  with  these  poor  scruples  ;  grasp  the  sceptre  at  once,  and 
enter  on  your  rightful  glory  ! '  The  controversy,  thus  conceived, 
was  between  an  immediate  seizure,  by  questionable  means, 
of  the  Messianic  throne,  and  a  deferred  accession  to  it  through 
the  Divine  method    of  suffering  patience  and  the  martyr's 
sacrifice.     But  if,  as  we  have  reason  to  believe,  Jesus  never 
claimed  the  Messianic  character,  but  only  took  up  the  Bap- 
tist's message  and  prolonged  in  new  tones  his  herald's  cry 
that  the  advent  was  near,  a  different  aspect  must  be  given 
to  the  inward  wrestlings  of  those  desert  hours.     He  who  pro- 
claims a  change  of  sovereignty  over  the  world  must  be  able 
to  tell  what  that  change  is  to  be  :  he  cannot  "  make  ready 
the  way  of  the  Lord  "  unless  he  knows  whither  his  paths  are 
to  lead :  the  harbinger  of  a  fresh  order  of  human  life  must 
be  at  one  with  the  future  to  wliich  he  invites  men  to  conform 
by  anticipation.     In   his  baptism  Jesus  solemnly  joined  the 
band  of  precursors  on  the  watch  for  the  kingdom  :  the  vows 


636  THE  DIVhXE   IN   THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

of  self-declication  -which  his  repentance  carried  in  it,  and  the 
mixed  scene  at  the  river's  edge,  must  render  impossible  a 
mere  return  to  the  routine  of  secular  industry,  and  overcharge 
his  heart  with  the  burden  of  a  divine  message,  yet  undefined, 
beginning  with  John's,  but  not  ending  there.  When  he  tries 
to  deliver  it  and  forecast  the  dwelling  of  God  among  men. 
how  shall  he  speak '?  Shall  he  reproduce  the  temporal  terrors 
and  glories  of  the  prophets,  threaten  the  fate  of  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah,  promise  the  splendours  of  David  and  Solomon, 
and  paint  the  earth  with  fields  and  vineyards  that  yield 
a  hundredfold,  and  represent  all  nations  as  tributary  to 
Jerusalem  ?  Or  dropping  these  things  as  permitted  to  "  them 
of  old  time  "  only  for  the  hardness  of  their  hearts,  may  he 
rather  learn  for  himself  from  the  living  Father  who  communes 
with  him  in  secret,  whose  love  is  the  quickening  essence  of  all 
other  love,  and  whose  perfection  is  for  ever  working  against 
all  imperfection  ?  Between  the  national  and  political  dream, 
and  the  spiritual  and  human  reality,  of  a  kingdom  of  heaven — 
that  was  the  conflict  from  which  Jesus  issued,  pale  with 
prayer  and  fasting,  but  clear  of  evil  spirits,  "  for  a  season  " 
at  least,  if  not  for  ever. 

Sooner  than  he  had  expected,  he  was  called  to  fulfil  his 
vow :  the  voice  of  John  was  silenced  in  prison,  and  left  its 
message  to  be  taken  up  by  him.  "  When  he  heard  that  John 
was  delivered  up,  he  came  into  Galilee,"  and  "  began  to 
preach  and  to  say,  Eepent  ye,  for  the  kmgdom  of  heaven  is 
at  hand."*  The  wording  was  the  same,  still  fixing  the  eye 
of  faith  on  the  reign  of  righteousness  ;  but  the  method  was 
different.  He  dropped  the  baptism  by  which  the  mission  had 
been  centred  at  a  smgie  spot  and  in  an  outward  rite,  and  the 
prophet  could  but  stand  still  and  reiterate  the  same  formula, 
with  little  variation,  to  large  classes  of  unknown  men ;  he 
set  himself  free  to  circulate  among  the  village  families,  and 
converse  on  the  roads  with  husbandmen  and  mariners,  whose 
every  question  might  supply  a  text,  and  every  trouble  give 
occasion  for  a  blessing  or  a  prayer.  This  conversion  of  a 
stationary  into  an  itinerant  mission,  shifts  its  very  centre  of 
gi-avity.     The  rush  to  the  Jordan  was  a  movement  of  panic, 

*  Matt.  iv.  12,  17  ;  Mark  i.  14,  15. 


Chap.  II.]      THE  RELIGION-  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      607 

started  by  the  cry  "  Flee  from  the  wrath  to  come."  The  at- 
traction to  Jesus  ^Yas  the  persuasion  of  a  personality  rendering 
all  "  very  attentive  to  hear  him."  John  had  been  but  "  a  voice 
crying  in  the  wilderness  :"  Jesus  himself,  by  his  very  presence, 
taught  them  more  than  all  he  said.  "John  did  no  miracle," 
nor  did  any  one  think  of  ascribing  them  to  him  ;  but  Jesus 
drew  upon  him  so  bright  a  cloud  of  love  and  wonder,  that 
marvels  multiplied  around  him,  whether  he  would  or  not. 
This  immediate  personal  influence  apparently  won  for  him, 
almost  at  sight,  his  iirst  permanent  disciples,  the  two  pairs  of 
brothers,  Andrew  and  Peter,  James  and  John,  who  formed 
the  nucleiis  of  his  assistant  train.  Little  as  they  could  as 
yet  understand  him,  their  reverent  attachment  sufficed  to 
begin  with.  They  could  variously  help  him  on  his  way,  could 
leave  him  free  to  preach  or  to  be  alone,  could  mediate  between 
him  and  the  multitude  that  soon  gathered  around  his  steps, 
and  could  sometimes  even  go  before  him  and  bear  the  main 
purport  of  his  message  to  the  places  "  whither  he  himself 
should  come." 

In  the  story  of  the  life  which  he  henceforth  led,  there  are 
doubtless  many  blanks  ;  nor  can  we  place  confidence  in  all 
the  fragments  which  have  been  saved.  Yet,  scanty  as  our 
knowledge  is  of  what  he  did  and  said  during  the  great 
majority  of  his  days,  no  one  can  affect  ignorance  of  what  he 
was  ;  enough  is  saved  to  plant  his  personality  in  a  clear  space, 
distinct  from  all  that  history,  or  even  fiction,  presents.  The 
authority  of  the  Baptist  had  been  that  of  censorship  alone, 
as  of  an  officer  of  justice  sent,  for  discipline,  to  a  colony  of 
criminals.  But  who  will  raise  the  question,  whether  Jesus 
could  bless  as  well  as  denounce'?  With  him  benediction 
came  to  the  front  and  sat  upon  his  brow.  The  flash  of  his 
eye  was  no  "  dry  light,"  but  could  be  dimmed  with  tears. 
The  depth  to  which  his  words  sank  into  the  heart  measured 
the  depth  from  which  they  were  drawn.  And  though,  with 
the  will  of  a  delicate  wisdom,  he  could  retain  his  reserves  of 
thought,  no  art  or  disguise  clouded  the  transparency  of  his 
spirit ;  you  knew  what  he  loved  and  what  he  abhorred  as  surely 
as  you  saw  who  they  were  that  loved  him,  and  who  that  hated. 
All  except  those  who  had  lost  the  key  of  sympathy  in  them- 


6o8  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

selves,  discerned  at  a  glance  what  features  most  moved  him 
in  human  life,  what  he  required  from  the  human  conscience, 
what  he  expected  for  the  human  soul ;  and  felt  as  if  they 
witnessed  behind  the  scene,  how  he  realized  the  hidden  life  of 
communion  with  God. 

The  aspect  of  his  life  most  arresting  to  the  observer,  was 
the  large  place  which  human  need  and  suffering  occupied  in 
his  thought  and  affection  ;  not  less,  the  unconscious  needs 
and  contented  privations  that  slept  in  the  darkness  of  low 
natures,  than  the  grievous  pains  of  bodily  infirmity  or  of 
wounded  love.  Their  appealing  look  was  met  by  such  an 
answering  glance  that,  wherever  he  went  they  thronged  around 
him  with  a  thirst  for  his  pity,  with  or  without  a  hope  for  his 
help.  You  can  scarcely  think  of  him  but  as  surrounded  by  a 
motley  group  of  the  maimed  with  as  various  sores  as  the 
patients  in  the  waiting-room  of  an  infirmary,  all  with  im- 
ploring eyes  longing  to  tell  their  tale.  It  is  easy  to  say  that 
this  was  sure  to  follow  from  the  popular  repute  of  his  miracu- 
lous powers.  Doubtless,  but  hardly  unless  you  prefix  an 
inverse  explanation,  and  account  for  the  wide  rumour  of  his 
miracles  of  mercy  by  the  wonderful  working  of  his  compassion 
upon  the  minds  of  men,  and  through  the  mind  enabling  at 
times  the  crippled  body  to  "  rise  up  and  walk."  The  pro- 
found impression  once  made  of  so  unique  an  agency,  more 
was  sure  to  be  told  of  him  than  he  actually  did.  But  even 
the  physical  exaggeration  is  not  without  its  moral  truth, — 
truth  of  inward  character,  if  not  of  outward  fact.  Nothing 
short  of  it  can  adequately  report  the  range  of  his  humanity. 
Doubt  as  you  may  how  many  of  the  broken  he  made  whole, 
it  is  certain  that  he  had  pity  on  all  that  was  pitiable,  and 
healed  all  that  was  curable. 

That  this  tender  insight  into  the  suffering  passages  of 
human  experience  should  draw  multitudes  around  him,  and 
make  "  the  common  people  hear  him  gladly,"  is  not  surpris- 
ing. As  little  can  we  wonder  that  they  were  sometimes 
startled,  and  even  scandalized,  by  observing  that  his  compas- 
sionate affection  seemed  more  deeply  stirred  by  moral  degra- 
dation than  by  personal  affliction.  Did  he  not  consort  with 
publicans  and  sinners '?  address  himself  rather  to  those  who 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.       609 

were  on  tlie  borders  of  guilt  than  to  the  righteous  who  needed 
no  repentance  ?  and  even  shield  the  adulteress  from  the 
accusers  of  her  shame?  Could  a  pro2)het  of  the  Holy  One 
who  "is  angry  with  the  wicked  every  day  "  so  lightly  treat 
the  breaches  of  His  Law  ?  No  more  natural  question  can  be 
asked  from  the  Jewish  point  of  view :  it  is  the  legalist's 
objection  to  a  deeper  spiritual  discernment.  The  social 
treatment  of  wrong-doing,  determined  by  its  outward  aspects, 
may  do  such  violence  to  right  proportion,  that  the  true 
observer's  displeasure  at  the  guilt  may  be  balanced  and  over- 
balanced by  indignation  at  too  cruel  a  punishment.  And  the 
leniency  charged  against  Jesus  was  shown  exclusively  towards 
outcast  sin,  banished  from  human  mercy  and  hope  less  for 
its  heinousness  than  for  its  indecorum,  though  often  more 
open  to  penitent  affection  and  more  amenable  to  a  restoring 
love,  than  less  glaring  forms  of  guilt.  But  sin  in  its  court- 
dress  or  its  priest's  robe,  sin  which  shirks  natural  duties 
under  pretence  of  holy  vows,  sin  which  confesses  at  church 
and  cheats  in  the  market,  which  flatters  its  patrons  and 
fleeces  its  clients,  which  gives  short  measure  and  makes  up 
by  long  prayers, — was  he  lenient  to  tliat  ?  Did  he  address 
himself  to  it  as  the  physician  to  heal  it,  or  as  the  judge  to 
condemn  it?  Or  rather  did  he  not,  by  the  sharpness  of  his  con- 
demnation, identify  himself  with  the  voice  itself  of  conscience 
and  of  God,  and  so  bring  into  play  the  only  living  power  in  which 
healing  could  be  found  ?*  To  the  merely  ethical  mind  these 
characteristics,  of  severest  purity  and  of  gentlest  forbearance, 
are  in  antagonism,  each  prevailing  at  the  cost  of  the  other. 
In  Jesus  they  found  their  union  in  the  one  deep  spring  of  all 
his  life,  his  relation  of  devout  love  to  the  Father  in  heaven,  as 
the  infinitely  perfect.  Where  this  pervades  the  entire  con- 
sciousness, and  the  touch  is  never  lost  between  the  human 
spirit  and  the  Divine,  all  morals  resolve  themselves  into  a 
personal  attitude  of  affection  towards  the  supremely  Holy,  a 
private   interchange   of   secret   sympathy,  of  mutual  under- 

*  Notwithstanding  the  traces  of  later  conformation  in  the  anti-pliarisaic 
discourses,  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  they  arc  redactions  of  earlier 
texts,  and  represent  the  real  attitude  of  Jesus  towards  tiie  ecclesiastical 
teaching  of  his  time. 

II    U 


6io  THE   DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN.  [Book  v. 

standing,  of  open  trust.  As  instituted  by  One  "who  seeth  in 
secret,"  it  need  not  and  will  not  talk  much  of  itself  and  sound 
its  own  praises  :  but,  though  free  from  all  disguise,  will  rather 
be  a  "  song  without  words  "  carrying  a  thrill  of  varying 
strength  and  sweetness  through  all  the  life.  This  one  rela- 
tion, realized  as  in  Jesus,  becomes  the  Supreme  good :  all 
other  good  is  but  its  dependent  reflection,  whose  meaning 
vanishes  in  the  absence,  that  is,  the  oblivion,  of  its  source. 
Harmony  with  God  is,  for  the  human  soul,  the  only  peace,  the 
only  right,  the  only  fair  :  to  see  things  as  he  sees  them  is 
truth  :  to  rank  them  in  the  order  of  his  love,  is  goodness  :  to 
act  conformably  with  his  rules,  is  victory.  To  quit  this  height 
and  look  out  from  any  lower  level  will  inevitably  substitute 
the  seeming  for  the  real,  and  deceive  you  by  the  secondary 
maxim  that  "  Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things," — a  maxim 
which  first  becomes  valid  when  "God  is  the  measure  of  man." 
If  you  once  set  up,  as  independent  objects  of  pursuit,  any  of 
the  subordinate  ends  attractive  to  the  human  will,  personal 
pleasure,  be  it  of  sense  or  soul,  the  prizes  of  ambition,  the 
advancement  of  knowledge,  even  the  disinterested  service  of 
others ;  all  these  things,  cut  off  from  their  transcendent 
support  and  spiritual  significance,  degenerate  into  selfish 
cupidities  or  generous  idolatries.  And  even  the  rules  for 
controlling  and  proportioning  them,  that  is,  their  ethical 
regulation,  however  anxiously  studied,  can  amount  to  no 
more,  when  worked  by  a  calculating  will  dealing  with  forces 
on  its  own  level,  than  a  sterile  art  of  self-perfectioning. 
Severed  from  the  uplifting  inspiration,  it  is  a  mutilated  self, 
that  can  have  no  perfection ;  and  only  sham  virtues  are 
reached  by  doing  their  externals  for  a  foreign  object  or  out  of 
a  dead  heart.  "Wlio  can  wonder  that  he  who  has  led  us  to  the 
Father  encountered,  on  descending  from  the  mount  of  his 
prayer,  this  "  righteousness  of  the  Law  "  with  an  intense 
aversion  ?  The  mimicry  of  holiness  by  fitting  the  livery  of 
the  virtues  on  to  the  figure  of  an  ethical  automaton  is  a 
sacrilegious  traffic  in  Divine  relations,  of  which  the  temple 
of  life  should  be  cleansed  at  any  cost.  Any  fresh  con- 
verse, spirit  to  spirit,  between  man  and  God,  even  passion's 
repentant  cry  de,  2)yofundis,  which  lays  bare  whatever  sinks 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      6ii 

or  lifts  the  soul,  touches  the  true  prophet's  heart  with  deeper 
sympathy. 

It  is  the  singleness  of  this  life  in  God  that  gave  its  unique- 
ness to  the  personality  of  Jesus ;  referring  back  all  his 
experiences  to  the  infinitely  Perfect,  all  his  sorro^YS  to  the 
eternal  blessedness,  all  his  disappointments  to  the  living 
Fountain  of  hope.  The  deluding  impressions  of  a  drudgmg 
and  suffering  world  were  habitually  checked  and  transcended 
by  a  recovered  contact  with  the  one  and  only  Good.  Stealing 
out  before  the  dawn,  or  lingering  on  the  hills  into  the  night, 
he  quenched  in  the  silence  the  wranglings  of  disciples  and  the 
importunities  of  the  crowd,  and  received,  in  answer  to  his 
prayer,  a  fresh  share  of  the  Love  which  overarches  and  must 
penetrate  the  world.  Lifted,  in  these  meditative  moments,  to 
the  Divine  point  of  view,  he  apprehends  the  essences  of  things, 
sees  them  no  longer  as  they  are  but  as  they  are  meant  to  be  ; 
and  is  doubly  touched,  with  a  true  joy  in  them,  so  far  as  they 
give  forth  their  intended  nature  entire  and  unspoiled ;  and 
with  a  deep  longing,  where  it  is  left  in  the  dark,  or  marred  in 
the  conscious  light,  to  bring  it  to  the  birth  or  redeem  it  from 
its  death.  The  whole  hierarchy  of  created  beings,  in  ascending 
types  from  the  grass  of  the  earth  to  the  angels  of  heaven,  was 
sacred  and  lovely  to  him  as  the  depository  and  vehicle  of  the 
Divine  thought,  which  could  always  be  read  in  their  possibili- 
ties, and  only  in  voluntary  agents  be  missed  in  fact.  Amid 
the  forms  of  unconscious  life,  too  simple  to  go  astray  and 
appointed  only  to  detain  the  air  and  dews  and  mould  them 
into  leafage  and  blossom,  what  gladness  flashed  from  his  eye 
and  broke  from  his  lips  as  he  looked  and  said,  "Behold  the 
lilies  of  the  field."  In  the  instinctive  creatures,  moved  hither 
and  thither  to  what  they  need  by  an  infallible  thought  that 
is  all  done  for  them,  with  what  a  heart-leap  of  delight  did  he 
read  for  them  the  providing  care  which  they  knew  not, 
when  their  wings  were  heard  overhead  and  their  shadow 
floated  along  the  grass,  and  he  exclaimed,  "  Behold  the  birds 
of  the  air ;  they  sow  not,  neither  do  they  reap,  nor  gather 
into  barns  ;  yet  your  heavenly  Father  feedeth  them  !  "  In 
the  more  manifold  nature  of  the  little  child,  still  in  the  play- 
time of  his  waking  impulses,  each    with    its  right   to   have 

R   R   2 


6i2  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  v. 

him  as  it  comes,  but  intended  by  revelation  of  its  ordered 
place  to  rise  from  instinctive  to  divine,  how  genuine  is  his 
embrace  of  their  free  innocence,  and  how  pathetic  his  hinted 
prayer  that,  through  the  guardian  angels  of  life,  it  may  pass 
unstained  into  voluntary  holiness !  In  whom  else,  among 
the  regenerators  of  the  world,  do  you  meet  with  this  tender 
enthusiasm  for  natures  that  are  less  than  moral,  this  sympathy 
with  impulse  still  at  large  and  waiting  for  the  discipline  of 
thought  and  will '?  Their  characteristic  has  usually  been  a 
stern  and  suspicious  attitude  towards  the  realm  of  nature 
below  the  sphere  of  grace,  nay,  even  a  disposition  to  deny 
the  beauty  of  the  world  and  the  blessedness  of  human  life, 
and  designate  them  together  as  a  howling  wilderness ;  and, 
on  the  strength  of  this  theory,  to  disparage  literature,  art, 
science,  and  all  the  products  of  the  "natural  man"  as 
"  carnal  "  and  foreign  to  the  children  of  God. 

Instead  of  shrouding  the  real  earth  beneath  this  dark  pall 
hiding  it  from  heaven,  instead  of  despairing  of  any  good  but 
by  escape  beyond  humanity,  Jesus  looked  for  it  nowhere  else, 
and  lived  on  the  earth  as  already  bathed  in  heaven.  The 
illusion  of  asceticism  had  no  hold  on  him  :  there  was  nothins: 
to  kill  out  and  abolish  in  any  nature  :  in  all  that  was  God- 
given  he  beheld  only  what  was  good,  so  soon  and  so  long  as 
it  kept  its  appointed  place.  To  him  the  pure  and  spiritual 
was  not  beyond  the  material,  but  within  it,  ever  seeking  to 
clothe  itself  in  form  and  colour,  and  breathe  out  its  thought 
in  waves  of  sound.  The  outer  folds  of  things  seemed  to  fall 
away  before  him,  and  lay  their  meaning  bare  ;  and  hence  he 
so  often  saw  in  those  around  him  a  light  of  good,  a  shade  of 
ill,  which  they  knew  not  themselves  ;  and  by  a  hint,  or  even 
a  glance,  touched  the  one  with  hope,  and  softened  the  other 
with  shame  and  tears.  No  disguise,  of  decorum  or  inde- 
corum, availed  to  hide  from  him  the  doublings  or  the 
simplicity  of  the  soul  within.  The  costume  of  the  Samar- 
itan, the  office  of  the  publican,  the  rags  of  the  beggar, 
the  sores  of  the  leper,  intercepted  from  him  no  gleam  of 
goodness,  no  glow  of  trust.  His  very  look,  like  the  spring 
sunshine,  searched  below  the  rough  unsightly  soil,  and  mel- 
lowed the  seeds  of  good,  till  an  unexpected  verdure  surprised 


Chap.  II.]     THE   RELIGTOA  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      613 

the  ground.  In  many  of  those  ^Yho  were  shunned  and  cast 
out  as  smners  his  spiritual  penetration  recognized  a  class, 
not  of  volunteers  in  preferred  wickedness,  but  of  neglected 
and  undisciplined  children,  swept  away,  prior  to  the  l)irtli 
of  conscience,  by  this  or  that  uppermost  passicn,.  rather 
than  deliberate  rebels  abjuring  a  sworn  loyalty :  their  in- 
tense affections,  though  not  j^et  brought  under  the  comparing 
and  controlling  eye  of  the  moral  consciousness,  were  a  store- 
house of  hopeful  power,  as  soon  as  they  looked  each  other 
in  the  face  and  woke  up  to  the  discovery  of  their  respective 
ranks.  The  new  reverence  that  would  thence  arise  could  be 
kindled  by  no  touch  so  readily  as  the  appealing  sympathy  of 
Jesus ;  and  many  a  passionate  soul  was  stopped  on  its  whirl- 
wind as  he  turned  his  pitying  look  upon  its  madness  ;  and 
bursting  into  tears  of  penitence,  found  in  devotion  to  him 
a  transcending  calm  which  nature's  wildest  wdnds  and  waves 
obey. 

This  habit  and  power  of  seeing  what  is  invisil)le  in  men, 
and  of  measuring  affection  towards  them  by  what  they  are  in 
themselves  rather  than  by  what  they  have  outwardly  seemed, 
gives  the  key  to  his  startling  solution  of  the  problem  of 
mutual  forgiveness.  "How  often,"  asks  Peter,  "shall  my 
brother  sin  against  me,  and  I  forgive  him?  until  seven 
times?  Jesus  saith  unto  him,  I  say  not  unto  thee  mitil 
seven  times,  but  until  seventy  times  seven ;  "*  or,  as  Luke 
has  it,  with  probably  more  approach  to  the  original,  "  If  he 
sin  against  thee  seven  times  in  a  day,  and  se\eii  times  turn 
again  to  thee,  saying  I  repent,  thou  shalt  forgive  him."t 
This  does  not  imply  that  you  are  to  renounce  your  disap- 
proval of  his  recent  sin :  if  you  did,  you  would  fall  into 
variance  with  him  ;  for  he  has  come  to  disa^jprove  it  liim- 
self.  It  does  not  mean  that  you  are  to  interpose  and  cut 
off,  if  you  can,  its  entail  of  natural  penalty :  to  promise,  for 
instance,  to  trust  him  as  much  in  the  future  as  if  he  had 
always  l)een  faithful :  if  you  did,  he  would  be  the  first  to 
decline  your  confidence  as  misplaced  ;  for  in  his  repentance 
he  knows  that  he  cannot  trust  himself.  He  has,  in  fact, 
come  round  to  your  feeling,  so  far  as  it  is  purely  moral, 
'■'■'  Matt,  xviii.  21,  22.  -  +  Liike  xvii.  i. 


6 14  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

about  his  act ;  and  you  are  to  accept  and  welcome  it  with 
entire  sympathy :  to  be  angry  with  him  only  as  he  is  angiy 
with  himself :  to  be  sorry  with  him  simply  as  he  is  sorry  for 
himself.  But  if  your  feeling  towards  his  past  conduct  is 
more  than  a  hurt  moral  sense,  if  it  has  the  heat  of  anger 
and  resentment,  because  the  wrong  has  been  against  you 
in  particular  rather  than  against  the  law  of  right  individu- 
alized in  another,  this  personal  element  must  be  utterly  and 
instantly  blotted  out :  without  recanting  the  morning's  dis- 
approval, the  evening's  alienation  must  be  unconditionally 
renounced  :  you  must  love  him  for  what  he  is,  and  with  the 
more  joy  because  it  is  other  than  what  he  was,  and  your 
affections  have  come  into  coincidence.  And  this  you  must 
do  with  free  heart  and  ^  no  reproachful  reserves  :  the  less 
you  remember  his  weakness,  the  more  you  will  nourish  his 
strength,  by  calling  into  play  the  pure  and  sweet  affections 
before  which  the  spirits  of  evil  fly.  Most  true  is  it  that 
human  forgiveness  thus  becomes  the  miniature  reflection  of 
the  Divine.  When  the  heavenly  Father  receives  back  a  wan- 
dering penitent  on  his  return,  does  he  repeal  any  law  on  his 
behalf,  and  treat  him  as  if  he  had  never  strayed,  so  as  to 
abolish  the  difference  between  the  ever-faithful  and  the  rebel 
suppliant  at  the  gate  ?  By  no  means  :  not  a  link  of  the 
chain  of  self-incurred  habits,  of  low  thought  and  wrong  desire, 
will  be  struck  off  by  miracle  on  his  behalf:  he  must  drag 
them  still,  till  his  own  heightened  energy  shall  break  them, 
one  by  one,  or  his  patient  will  shall  wear  them  out.  But  he 
■  is  an  alien  no  more :  he  is  at  home  again  with  the  All- 
merciful  ;  and  to  an  energy  in  touch  with  the  everlasting 
Love,  a  patience  upheld  by  the  Divine  whisper  'Faint  on, 
dear  soul,  and  conquer,'  all  things  are  possible,  and  the  forgiven 
also  may  be  numbered  with  the  saints.  Thus  is  the  scope  of 
forgiveness  literally  exhaustless  and  eternal,  both  between 
finite  free  natures  among  themselves,  and  between  the  finite 
spirit  and  the  Infinite. 

If  the  coexistence  in  .Jesus  of  the  strictest  construction  of  the 
moral  law,  with  an  exceptional  tenderness  towards  passionate 
natures,  is  referable  to  his  life  in  God,  the  reason  is  obvious. 
Such  life  is  a  relation  of  communion  between  two  invisibles, 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      615 

the  Infinite  Spirit,  and  the  heart  of  man.     It  involves  there- 
fore sjnrituaUtij  in  religion  and  inwardness  for  the  whole  seat 
of  morals.     It  concentrates  attention  on  the  point  to  which 
the  Searcher  of   spirits   looks,  the   hidden   spring  of   every 
agent's  word  or  deed ;  and  regards  even  the  same  passion 
quite  differently,   according    as   it   is   a   blind  impulse   that 
knows  not  itself,  of  the  animal  stage,  or  the  seeing  impulse, 
conscious  of  its  relative  place,  of  the  spiritual  stage.     If  it 
be  the  former,  as  it  may  be  in  adults  that  have  missed  the 
way  to  become  men  and  women,  it  is  mere  unwrought  instinct, 
the  rudimentary  material  of  a  conscience  that  has  never  been 
formed,  and  as  little  subject  to  estimate  as  the  brute's  hunger 
and  thirst.     If  it  be  the  latter,  and  have  wrongly  swayed  the 
will,  the  sin  may  be  judged  to  have  any  variety  of  shade, 
according  to  the  measure  of  insight  and  temptation  ;    from 
the  tender  condemnation  that  lays  on  the  child's  first  trans- 
gression a  load  of  arresting  grief,  to  the  scathing  indignation 
which  invokes  retribution  on  the  delil^erate  traitor  and  for- 
sworn apostate  from  known  right.     In  many  a  slave  to  evil 
ways  Jesus  knows  the  degradation  to  be  greater  than  the 
guilt,  and  sees  the  autocracy  of  a  passion  never  challenged, 
denoting   a   nature  undeveloped,  that  has  remained  in  the 
animal  stage  past  the  proper  time.     It  were  cruel  to  heap 
reproaches  on  it,  ere  it  is  conscious  of  its  probation  :  the 
true  need  is  the  completion  of  its  inner  life  into  the  respon- 
sible  stage,   to   waken   up   the   competing    host   of    human 
affections,  and  accept  their  relative  appeals,  till  their  autho- 
rity is  owned,  and  they  put  shame  on  the  life  already  in 
occupation.      To  his  searching  eye,  the   possibility  of   this 
unfolding  is  always  there ;  but  it  is  a  possibility  that  sleeps, 
till  some  sweet  serenade  thrills  through  the  darkness,  and 
disperses  the  turbid  dream,  by  the  dawning  certainties  of  a 
better  day.     And  so,  by  his  call  '  Awake  !  Arise  ! '  he  sought 
to  transfer  the  monotonous  intensity  of  one  tyrant  passion  to 
the  harmonized  enthusiasm  of  all,  and  to  make  the  new-born 
soul  compensate  its  late  nativity  by  the  fuller  glow  of   its 
devotion. 

If  in  these  cases  of  undeveloped  humanity,  he  was  intent 
on  calling  up  new  affections  and  flinging  them  as  fresh  bat- 


6i6  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

talions  on  the  field,  it  was  naturally  otherwise  when  he 
addressed  himself  to  riper  natures  that  knew  their  own 
resources  and  were  already  moralized  by  experience  of  conflict 
and  temptation.  If  they  went  wrong,  it  is  not  because  they 
were  possessed  by  some  demon  passion,  but  because  they  were 
not  self-possessed  :  with  the  means  of  victory,  they  suffered 
themselves  to  incur  defeat.  Jesus  fixes  their  eye  upon  the 
chief  reason  of  this,  when  he  tells  them  to  keep  watch  and 
control  over  the  intensity  of  each  impulse  of  the  soul,  since 
there  is  not  one  that  may  not,  if  left  to  itself,  become  a  despot 
and  make  a  criminal.  Tamper  with  inward  purity,  and  you 
may  find  yourself  an  adulterer  :  bind  fast  your  anger,  or  you 
may  become  a  murderer :  you  are  at  the  beginning  of  these 
crimes,  from  the  first  moment  of  your  relaxed  restraint :  for 
yourself  the  taint  of  the  sin  is  already  there.  "  From  within, 
out  of  the  heart  of  men,  evil  thoughts  proceed,  fornications, 
thefts,  murders,  adulteries,  covetings,  wickedness,  deceit, 
lasciviousness,  an  evil  eye,  railing,  pride,  foolishness :  all 
these  evil  things  proceed  from  within,  and  defile  the  man."* 
Be  sure  therefore,  that  till  you  live  above  the  range  of  hate 
and  anger,  to  you  the  voice  will  be  awful,  "  Thou  shalt  not 
kill :"  and  till  you  breathe  only  the  air  of  pure  desires,  there 
is  no  shame  too  foul  for  you  to  fear.  And  '  live  above  it '  you 
cannot  by  any  mere  resisting  effort  to  repress  it  and  keep  it 
down  :  but  only  by  surrendering  yourself  to  the  lifting  power 
of  a  higher  love,  in  which  the  solicitations  of  sense  and  the  fric- 
tions of  self  are  left  behind  :  nor  then  can  you  find  rest  short 
of  the  transcendent  and  supreme  aspiration  to  be  "  Perfect, 
as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect." 

This  is  the  conception,  this  the  anti- Stoic  dynamic  of  Duty 
that  simply  shapes  into  words  the  life  in  God  which  Jesus 
lived,  and  from  the  light  of  which  he  looked  on  the  scenes  of 
human  experience  and  character.  It  carries  in  it,  may  we 
not  saj^  as  its  crowning  grace  and  truth,  this  distinctive 
feature,  that  it  renders  Humility  an  eternal  attitude  for  all 
finite  minds,  rather  deepening  than  declining  with  their 
spiritual  advance;  for  it  is  the  spirit's  upturned  look  which, 
directed  upon  the  All-holy,  can  never  overtake  the  vision  that 

*  Mark  vii.  21-23. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      617 

entrances  it  and  draws  it  on  ;  so  that  the  loftiest  of  souls  is 
surest  to  say  to  a  clinging  dependent,  "  "W^iy  callest  thou  me 
good?     One  is  good,  that  is  God." 

The  obverse  side  of  this  reverence  for  the  inward  sanctuary 
of  life  must  inevitably  be  an  utter  aversion  to  all  casuistry  of 
mere  external  action,  which  differences  right  from  wrong  Ijy 
insignificant  variations  of  time  or  place,  of  word  or  deed,  while 
the  prompting  spirit  remains  the  same.  Whoever  lives,  like 
Jesus,  straight  out  of  a  spring  of  affection  which  needs  no 
rules  while  it  is  aflow  and  cannot  use  them  when  it  is  dry,  is 
necessarily  impatient  of  the  moral  mimicry  that  puts  on  the 
grimaces  and  does  the  postures  of  goodness  without  the  essence 
behind :  and  so,  careless  of  the  rabbis  and  their  text  alike,  he 
quitted  their  lines  of  definition,  and  seized  the  determining 
centre,  and  would  have  only  the  security  of  love  and  venera- 
tion for  every  duty.  How  indignantly  he  exposed  the  "  blind 
guides  "  that  at  once  burdened  and  misled  the  people,  and  the 
sacerdotal  dignitaries  with  their  flaunting  texts  and  empty 
pretences  to  superior  sanctity  !  How  light  he  made  of  the 
Sabbath  restraints,  when  innocent  needs  or  gentle  mercies 
called  !  It  was  impossil)le  that  the  antipathy  to  formal  rigour 
and  hollow  seml)lance  should  be  anvthing  less  than  intense  in 
one  who  had  found  the  unspeakal)le  depth  and  reality  of 
religion  at  the  supreme  Centre,  which  also  gave  simplicity  to 
morals  and  dispensed  with  the  tangle  of  a  thousand  rules  : — a 
centre  which,  though  it  was  everywhere,  was  yet  so  far  away 
from  "  the  corners  of  the  streets  "  and  the  throng  of  men  that 
it  waits  for  the  soul  in  the  hill  retreats,  or  till  the  lonely 
chamber  is  reached  and  the  door  is  shut. 

This  antipathy  is  in  fact  but  the  shadow  of  that  sympathy 
with  ideal  aspiration  of  which  every  reader  will  call  to  mind 
touching  examples.  Of  one  only  among  the  many  applicants 
for  his  counsel  is  it  said  that  "  Jesus,  looking  on  him,  loved 
him  ;"  and  that  was  the  ricli  young  man  (or  "  ruler,"  as  Luke 
calls  him),  who  asked  him  the  conditions  of  "  eternal  life." 
Reading  perhaps  in  his  countenance  and  voice  the  sincerity 
and  the  secret  of  his  question,  Jesus  answers  it  at  first  as  any 
honest  Teacher  of  the  Law  in  Israel  might  have  answered  it ; 
referring  him  to  the  commandments,  and  selecting  his  ex- 


6iS  THE   DIVINE  IN  THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

amples  of  them  exclusively  from  the  moral  table  of  duties 
between  man  and  man,  and  with  one  exception  (the  honour  to 
parents)  all  from  the  prohibitive  list  "  Thou  slialt  not."  The 
test  answers  its  end :  by  playing  the  "  mere  moralist  "  Jesus 
immediately  reveals  the  idealist.  The  questioner's  counte- 
nance fell :  all  these  he  has  kept  from  his  youth  up  :  they 
are  but  a  stale  routine,  and  leave  a  void  in  his  heart  which 
allows  him  no  peace  and  only  breathes  forth  empty  sighs  for 
more.  What  is  it  that  is  wanting  ?  Just  what  Jesus  has  left 
unnamed,  and  now  supplies :  behind  and  within  and  above 
the  outward  duty  the  inward  enthusiasm  of  love  to  God  and 
love  to  men,  whatever  be  the  sacrifice  demanded  or  the  enter- 
prise imposed.  Wliether  this  also  goes  with  his  keeping  of 
the  commandments  he  may  easily  tell :  is  he  prepared  at  the 
call  of  a  divine  opportunity,  to  strip  himself  of  all  that  he  has, 
and  dedicate  all  that  he  is,  for  the  sake  of  those  who  need  his 
help,  and  are  ready  to  perish  ?  The  answer  strikes  deep ; 
and  he  goes  away  silent  and  humbled,  with  perhaps  a  fruitful 
sorrow.* 

The  same  relation,  of  mutual  supplementing  between  prac- 
tical conduct  and  spiritual  affection  involving  the  desolation 
of  either  without  the  other,  which  is  represented  in  the  self- 
variance  and  dejection  of  the  rich  youth,  reappears  with  the 
parts  divided  between  two  actors,  in  the  narrative  of  the 
sisters  of  Bethany,  the  one  fuming  about  her  household 
service,  the  other  drinking  at  the  fountains  of  faith  and 
devotion,  and  neither  of  them  sympathetic  with  the  other. 
The  practical  Martha  is  fretted  by  her  cares  wdiich  turn  her 
duties  into  task- work.  And  if  there  be  a  shade  of  melancholy 
on  Mary's  upturned  face,  is  there  perhaps  a  secret  misgiving 
whether  she  is  quite  considerate  towards  her  worried  sister  ? 
For  probably  it  is  not  the  first  time  that  the  friction  between 
the  restless  worker  and  the  meditative  dreamer  has  brought 
out  hot  words.  "Where  one  was  behindhand  in  energy  and  the 
other  attained  to  no  peace,  life  was  sure  to  chafe  harshly  and 
go  out  of  tune.  When  the  problem  was  brought  to  Jesus,  he 
took  it  up  at  the  same  end,  and  solved  it  in  the  same  sense, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  rich   man.     He  would  not   allow   the 

*  Mark  x.  17-22 ;  Matt.  xix.  16-22  ;  Luke  xviii.  18-23. 


Chap.  II.]      THE   RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      619 

listening  Mary  to  be  called  away  from  his  feet :  he  would  not 
promise  Martha  relief  from  her  troubles  by  merely  giving  her 
a  partner  in  them,  to  be  in  turn  no  less  harassed  than  lierseK. 
Peace  could  be  infused  into  the  conduct  of  affairs  only  by 
descending  into  it  with  a  new  spirit  fetched  from  a  diviner 
height,  an  inspiration  of  sacred  love  which  lightens  sacrifice 
and  tranquillizes  care.  There  is  the  source  and  spring  of  all 
the  activities  of  duty  ;  and  in  seeking  access  to  it  from  converse 
with  Jesus,  Mary  has  chosen  the  good  part  which  must  not 
be  taken  from  her. 

Still  more  readily  will  the  incident  of  the  alabaster  cruise 
of  ointment  lavished  upon  Jesus  occur  to  many  a  memory  as 
exemplifying  his  direct  look,  past  all  externals  of  action,  into 
its  well-spring  in  the  heart,  and  his  sympathy  with  it  if  only 
that  were  pure.*  And  so  far,  in  any  case,  the  story  does 
attest  his  joyful  welcome  of  all  that  issues  from  a  stainless 
love.  But  it  is  so  differently  told  as  to  leave  it  doubtful  what 
the  affection  was  which  was  so  passionately  shed  on  him  at 
Simon's  guest  table.  According  to  the  earliest  tradition,  it 
was  simply  the  devout  personal  reverence  of  a  pious  woman 
from  among  his  disciples,  lifted  probably  to  enthusiasm  by 
forebodings  of  the  fatal  night  which  was  only  two  days  oft',  as 
indeed  Jesus  himself  recognizes  when  he  pleads  on  her  behalf 
that  she  is  only  beforehand  with  his  embalming.  According 
to  Luke,  on  the  other  hand,  who  takes  back  the  incident  from 
Bethany  to  a  far  earlier  time  in  Galilee,  the  act  was  the 
homage  of  a  sinful  woman  in  an  agony  of  penitence  at  the 
feet  of  him  who  had  awakened  it  in  her  ;  and  Jesus  accepts  it, 
against  the  scandalized  murmurmgs  of  his  Pharisaic  host,  as 
a  better  pledge  of  final  peace  with  God  than  Simon's  self- 
righteous  respectability,  because  flowing  from  a  heart  that 
spares  itself  no  sorrow,  and  offers  all  it  has ;  "  her  sins  are 
forgiven,  for  she  has  loved  much."  Not  only  time  and  place 
and  person  are  different,  but  all  the  subordinate  particulars  : 
the  Simon  of  Galilee  is  called  simply  a  Pharisee :  the  Simon 
of  Bethany  is  described  as  a  "  leper  "  that  had  recovered. 
The  objections  to  the  woman's  act  proceed,  in  Luke,  from  the 
host,  and  are  founded  on  the  character  of  the  woman,  which  a 
*  Mark  xiv.  3-9 ;  Matt.  xxvi.  6-13 ;  Luke  vii.  30-40. 


020  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

prophet  ought  to  have  known.  They  proceed,  m  the  other 
synoptists,  from  some  of  the  disciples,  in  anger  at  the  waste  of 
the  costly  contents  of  the  cruise.  The  defensive  pleas  urged 
by  Jesus  in  reply,  following  this  difference,  are  dissimilar. 
But  in  spite  of  this,  and  therefore  of  the  uncertainty  regard- 
inG!  the  form  of  historical  fact  which  is  the  base  of  the 
tradition,  the  one  element  of  its  significance  which  remains 
untouched  is,  the  invariable  penetration  of  Jesus,  in  his  read- 
ing of  human  relations,  of  man  with  God,  and  of  men  with 
each  other,  to  the  inward  affections  in  which  all  good  and  ill 
of  character  reside.  Even  were  all  historical  claim  for  the 
narrative  deemed  questionable,  still  the  resort  of  fiction  so 
repeatedly  to  stories  with  this  same  impression,  and  repro- 
ducing the  one  unmistakable  personality,  would  itself  afford 
a  strong  presumption  that  the  portraiture  was  from  the  life. 

Mark  yet  a  further  feature.  Though  in  his  short  personal 
ministry  the  mission  of  Jesus  was  only  to  the  "  lost  slieep  of 
the  house  of  Israel,"  his  estimate  of  men  by  the  springs  of 
their  inner  life  inevitably  neutralized  this  restriction  of  his 
influence  and  became  the  source  of  absolute  catholicity  in  his 
religion.  For  however  the  tribes  of  mankind  may  differ 
from  each  other,  it  is  only  by  varied  proportions  of  the  same 
elements  :  and  there  is  no  motive  passion  or  affection,  no 
type  of  intelligent  faculty,  of  which  any  people  can  claim  a 
monopoly.  "  God  hath  made  of  one  family  every  nation  of 
men  for  to  dvv'ell  on  all  the  face  of  the  earth."*  And  if  it  be 
the  hidden  soul  by  which  he  reads  them  and  by  which  they 
stand  more  or  less  near  to  him,  if  the  goodness  which  he  loves 
is  not  the  service  of  the  lips  or  sacrifice  by  the  hand,  but  the 
pure  intent  of  the  mind,  then  all  the  sacredness  of  life  lies 
behind  language,  usage,  race ;  and  there  is  a  path  to  heaven 
from  every  clime,  and  a  spiritual  unity  among  men,  which 
should  shams  their  scorns  and  enmity  away.  Hence,  the 
sure  emergence  of  religion,  in  this  rebirth,  from  the  exclusive- 
ness  of  ruder  monotheisms.  It  cannot  but  break  into 
universality,  comprehensive  as  the  love  of  God,  who  makes  his 
sun  to  shine  and  his  rain  to  fall  upon  the  evil  and  the  good, 
patient  of  everything  except  the  selfish  pride  which  would  turn 

*  Acts  xvii.  28. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY   REALIZED.      621 

divine  things  into  a  property.  Hence  too,  in  Jesus  himself, 
the  quick  eye  for  every  trace  of  artless  love  and  pious  trust, 
wherever  found  ;  and  his  special  joy  in  it  if  it  came  to  him 
in  the  stranger  or  the  alien,  the  centurion,  the  publican,  the 
Phccnician,  the  Samaritan.  His  sympathy,  not  lingering  on 
the  cultivated  plots  and  ornamental  grounds  of  life,  rather 
hangs  around  its  highways  and  hedges :  and  there,  exploring 
among  the  weeds  and  lifting  their  soiled  leaves,  he  turned  up 
the  modest  face  of  many  a  lurking  flower, — the  child's  suscep- 
tibility, the  widow's  offering,  the  penitent's  profuse  affection. 
And  when  he  stood  upon  the  mountain  side  and  taught,  never 
surely  did  such  a  dew  fall  upon  the  grass  as  his  benedictions 
dropped  upon  the  arid  temper  of  that  age  :  the  poor  in  spirit, 
the  meek,  the  pure  in  heart,  the  soul  thirsting  after  goodness, 
— these  are  the  really  blest,  intent  on  ends  which  God  also 
loves  and  will  not  disappoint.  Nor  is  it  only  in  the  incidental 
indications  of  his  own  personal  preferences  that  this  tender 
catholicity  appears  :  so  deeply  is  it  seated  in  him  that  it 
presses  to  the  foreground  in  his  teaching  with  such  dramatic 
vividness  and  pathetic  power  as  to  reverse  the  antipathies  of 
his  time,  and  put  a  light  of  grace  into  the  most  hated  names. 
Has  not  the  '  Publican '  become  to  us  the  symbol  of  humility, 
ever  since  we  saw  him  in  the  temple  "afar  off"  behind  the 
'  Pharisee,'  and  heard  him,  as  with  downcast  eves  he  beat 
upon  his  breast,  saying,  "  God  be  merciful  to  me,  a  sinner  "  *? 
And  if  the  artist  wants  a  group  that  shall  most  movingl}' 
present  to  the  beholder's  mind  the  power  and  beauty  of 
compassion,  can  anything  come  sooner  into  his  thought  and 
his  design  than  the  dismounted  figure  on  the  rock}^  heights 
of  Jericho,  bending  over  the  wounded  traveller,  ministering 
to  hill!  \vit1i  oil  and  wine,  setting  biiu  on  liis  own  l)east 
and  taking  care  of  him  ;  and  ever  after  called  the  "  Good 
Samaritan  "  ? 

From  the  working  of  these  catholic  sympathies  within  the 
limits  of  an  exclusive  Israel  arose  another  feature  of  the 
utmost  moment  to  the  future  of  the  world,  viz.,  the  power  of 
development  in  religion  which,  without  prejudice  to  human 
reverence,  saved  the  old  elements  from  hindering  tlie  new, 
and,  instead  of  stiffening  the  law,  as  the  Pharisees  said,  into 


622  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN.  [BookV. 

"  a  hedge,''  made  its  boundary  elastic,  so  long  as  it  was  described 
around  the  same  centre  of  principle.     Far  from  removing  one 
dispensation  to  make  room  for  another,   or  impugning  the 
authority  of  the  sacred  books,  Jesus  taught  in  the  synagogues 
from  the  text  of  the  prophets,  and  justified  his  most  spiritual 
lessons  by  the  language  of  the  Law.     ^^^lerever  it  is  possible, 
he  charges  the  narrowness  and  triviality  of  the  Jewish  rules, 
not  on  the  written  code,  but  on  the  annotating  "  tradition  of 
the  elders  "  :  "ye  make  void  the  commandment  of  God  by 
your  tradition."     But  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  he  lays 
himself  open  to  the  reply,   '  If  at  our  hands  the  text  has  its 
meaning  maimed  by  restriction,  in  yours  it  is  lost  by  exten- 
sion ' :  it  is  not  by  legal  interpretation  but  by  retreat  back  to 
legislative  grounds  in  the  nature  of  man  and  the  purpose  of 
God,  that  he  dispenses  with  the  letter  of  the  Sabbath  institu- 
tion and  sets  it  free  for  "  doing  good,"  though  it  breaks  the 
appointed  "  rest."     His  concentration  of  all  good  in  the  inward 
affection  whence  action  flows  supersedes  at  once  whole  chap- 
ters of  the  Mosaic  code,  "  making,"  as  the  evangelist  himself 
remarks,  "  all  meats  clean."  *     And   his  judgment   of  the 
questions  of  divorce  by  bill,  as  the  law  prescribed,  and  of  re- 
marriage after  divorce,  by  reference  to  the  story  of  Adam  and 
Eve,  as  the  ruling  instance  of  the  Divine  intent,  is  a  direct 
overriding  of  admitted  statutory   ordinances  of  God  by  his 
intimated  prior  idea  in  the  constitution  of  nature  and  the 
moral  life  of  man. f     And  surely  the  personal  characteristics 
that  commended  the  argument  to  him  are  full  of  interest  and 
beauty  :  see  the  divine  meaning  of  marriage  in  its  origin  :  one 
man,  one  woman,  given  to  each  other  by  God  himself,  given 
for  life,  when  as  yet  there  was  no  death  and  no  other  human 
life  :  who  can  doubt  what  this  contemplates  ?  or  fancy  Adam 
sending  Eve  away,  or  vice  versa  ?     Could   any   hardness  of 
heart  be  greater,  or  more  odious  ?     Yet  it  was  not  that  they 
were  sinless,  as  we  know  :  as  they  had  lived  in  Paradise  to- 
gether so  they  quitted  it  together  ;  and  were  one,  "  for  better, 
for  worse."     And  so  he  decides  that,  in  allowing  the  dissolu- 
tion  of  marriage,  and    the  remarriage   of  man   or  woman, 
Moses  yielded  the  best  to  secure  the  practicable,  in  concession 

*  Mark  vii.  19.  t  Mark  x.  2-12. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      623 

to  the  "  hardness  of  their  hearts."  This  mode  of  treatment 
evidently  takes  away  all  final  authority  from  defined  systems 
of  law  and  usage,  and  makes  them  liable  to  be  tested  by  the 
standards  of  clearer  reason  and  higher  sense  of  right :  it  makes 
living  conscience  the  perpetual  amender  of  historic  enactments 
and  social  practice.  The  husk  is  discarded,  the  true  germ  is 
found  within  :  and  it  is  "  as  if  a  man  cast  seed  into  the 
ground,"  which  could  "  spring  up  and  grow,  he  knoweth 
not  how."  * 

It  was  in  virtue  of  this  method,  of  going  behind  the  letter 
to  seize  the  spirit  of  the  past,  that  the  early  Christianity, 
almost  captured  by  the  Gentile  predominance  in  the  second 
century,  was  saved  from  total  repudiation  of  its  Hebrew 
parentage ;  and  that  the  precious  literature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment remained,  in  the  church  as  in  the  synagogue,  the  sacred 
depository  of  divine  truth  and  spiritual  experience. 

This  inward  and  ideal  life  in  God,  wrought  out  by  personal 
insight  assimilating  the  finest  elements  of  Israelitish  devotion, 
could  not  but  remould  in  Jesus  his  inherited  conceptions  of 
the  "  kmgdom  of  God  "  which  he  had  to  announce,  and  bring 
them  into  some  conformity  with  itself.  The  message  of  John 
the  Baptist,  though  remaining  in  terms  the  same  when  taken 
up  and  continued  by  him,  became  insensibly  enlarged  in  scope 
and  elevated  in  meaning,  involving  a  variance  ever  wider 
from  the  national  aspirations.  So  long  as  he  was  delivering 
it  to  the  mixed  population  of  his  native  province, — "  Galilee 
of  the  Gentiles  "  as  it  was  called, — there  would  be  hearers 
among  the  crowds  around  him,  and  even  in  the  sj'nagogues, 
who  would  yield  reverence  to  his  spiritual  appeal,  and  not  be 
too  orthodox  for  his  free  handling  of  the  Prophets  and  the 
received  traditions.  And  it  was  only  natural  that  as  his 
characteristic  inspirations  more  and  more  deepl}'  possessed 
him  his  tone  should  become  firmer,  and  the  movement  of  his 
thought  in  their  defence  more  fresh  and  unconventional. 

But  the  time  came  when  the  scene  must  be  changed.  The 
message  to  Israel  is  not  delivered,  while  lingering  on  the  out- 
skirts and  hovering  among  the  northern  hills :  it  must  seek 
the  headquarters  of  the  nation  around  Ziou,  and  demand  an 

*  Mark  iv.  26,  27. 


624  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN.  [BookV. 

audience  from  the  chiefs  and  in  the  courts  of  its  sole  sanctuary. 
Eecognizing  the  call,  and  intending  to  answer  it  at  the  great 
national  anniversary  of  the  passover,  Jesus,  on  turning  south- 
wards from  "the  parts  of  Cc^sarea  PhilipjDi,"  "steadfastly  set 
his  face  to  go  to  Jerusalem."  The  very  terms  of  the  state- 
ment plainly  imply  that  he  knows  it  to  be  a  momentous  re- 
solve. With  what  feeling  did  he  embrace  and  execute  it  ? 
Did  he  go  up  with  the  joy  of  heart  which  becomes  the  herald 
of  glad  tidings,  clearing  in  advance  the  highway  for  the  on- 
ward march  of  the  Lord  of  Victory  ?  Do  we  hear  again  the 
exulting  words  extorted  by  the  Galilean  mission,  "I  beheld 
Satan  as  lightning  fall  from  heaven"?  When  warned  to 
escape  from  the  province,  or  "  Herod  will  kill  "  him,  does  he 
hasten  to  secure  his  refuge  in  "  the  city  of  the  great  King"  ? 
On  the  contrary,  while  he  can  take  his  time  in  the  dominions 
of  "that  fox,"  he  knows  what  is  next  before  him;  "for  it 
cannot  be  that  a  prophet  perish  out  of  Jerusalem."  *  Nothing 
in  his  life  is  more  certain  than  that,  from  this  moment  of 
decision,  the  shadow  of  a  cloud  fell  upon  his  spirit,  and  though 
softened  again  and  again  by  pathetic  lights  of  self-forgetting 
love,  was  never  lifted  till  after  its  deepest  darkness  in  Geth- 
semane. 

In  this  changed  mood,  the  evangelist,  in  common  with  his 
attendant  disciples,  saw  the  sorrow  of  Messiah  on  discovering 
that  a  dark  zone  of  suffering  and  death  lay  in  front  of  the 
steps  of  his  throne.  It  was  natural  for  them  to  trace  in  him 
the  prototype  of  their  own  vicissitudes  of  thought :  but  it  has 
been  already  shown  how  little  consistent  is  this  explanation 
with  the  historical  conditions  of  the  crisis.  His  depression  of 
spirit  was  indeed  due  to  his  anticipation  of  rejection  and 
martyrdom;  not  however  as  Messiah,  but  as  Messiah's  herald: 
from  the  city  to  which  he  was  bearing  the  Baptist's  message 
he  expected  the  Baptist's  fate  ;  all  the  more  because,  through 
the  workings  of  an  ever-deepening  spiritual  experience,  the 
kingdom  of  God  which  he  now  had  to  announce  was  far  less 
congenial  with  the  ritualism  of  the  Temple  and  the  fancies  of 
the  scribes,  than  had  been  the  stern  words  of  the  "  Voice 
crying  in  the  desert."     But  that  the  message,  now  to  be  de- 

*  Luke  xiii.  31-33. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      625 

livered  in  divine  tones,  was  identical  in  pui-pose  with  the 
Baptist's  is  doubly  evinced  by  Jesus  himself,  who,  when 
challenged  for  the  ''  authority  "  of  his  teaching,  at  once  puts 
it  on  a  footing  with  the  authority  of  John's,  and  accepts  for 
himself  the  answer  which  may  be  given  to  the  question, 
whether  Ins  mission  "was  from  heaven  or  from  men,"  *  and 
by  the  witness  of  both  ;  for  it  was  the  popular  belief  (a  belief 
which  troubled  Herod's  mind  f),  that  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
John  the  Baptist  had  risen  from  the  dead  :  an  idea  which 
could  never  arise  unless,  instead  of  being  the  object,  he  was 
simply  the  continuator  of  the  Baptist's  message. 

One  episode  indeed  there  is  in  the  narrative  of  his  journey, 
which  seems  at  variance  with  this  view.  The  triumphal  ride 
down  the  Mount  of  Olives  into  the  City  over  scattered 
garments,  and  amid  the  waving  of  palm  branches  and  the 
shouts  of  "  Hosanna,"  "  blessed  is  the  kingdom  that  cometh, 
of  our  Father  David !  "  certainly  means  nothing  less  than 
that  the  Galilean  caravan  was  possessed  by  the  enthusiasm  of 
Peter's  confession,  and  proclaimed  the  arrival  of  Messiah. 
And  if,  as  the  synoptists  tell,  Jesus  himself  took  the  initiative 
and  arranged  for  a  procession  which  should  duly  fulfil  the 
prophecy  of  Zachariah,|  he  must  have  emerged  from  his 
dejection,  and,  fired  with  the  popular  excitement,  have 
announced  himself  as  "  the  King  that  cometh  in  the  name 
of  the  Lord." 

How  far  this  striking  incident  can  be  accepted  as  historical, 
admits  of  no  tests  but  those  of  internal  consistency  with  the 
antecedent  and  sul)sequent  course  of  events  and  expressions 
of  character ;  for  testimony  there  is  none  ;  it  comes  itself  out 
of  the  obscurity  of  tradition ;  and  no  witness  can  be  cited  to 
confirm  or  contradict  it.  It  is  the  more  open,  however,  to 
judgments  of  probability,  because  it  is  evidently  related,  not 
in  the  interest  of  pure  history,  but  as  a  piece  of  supernatural 
evidence,  combining  in  itself  the  persuasion  of  miracle  per- 
formed and  prophecy  fulfilled  ;  Jesus  manifesting  a  divine 
knowledge  and  authority  with  regard  to  the  ass  and  its  owners, 
and  being  escorted  into  the  holy  city  in  the   very  manner 

*  :Mark  xi.  27-33.  t  Luke  ix.  7-9.  %  ix.  9. 

S    S 


626  THE   DIVINE  IN   THE   HUMAN.  [BookV. 

already  described  by  the  ancient  seer.  I  need  the  less  remark 
on  the  strong  temptation  which  this  motive  presents  to  fit  the 
event  to  the  exigencies  of  the  argument,  rather  than  draw  the 
argument  from  the  exact  photograph  of  the  event,  as  an 
extreme  example  of  it  occurs  in  this  very  passage,  where 
Matthew,  misled  by  the  parallelism  of  Hebrew  poetry,  supplies 
not  only  an  ass,  but  also  its  foal,  and  apparently  makes  Jesus 
sit  on  both.* 

The  distrust  awakened  by  this  symptom,  as  well  as  by  the 
miraculous  perception  of  the  invisible  ass  and  its  owners,  is 
confirmed  by  several  considerations. 

(1.)  If  Jesus  sanctioned  and  led  the  triumphant  enthusiasm  of 
his  disciples,  and  entered  Jerusalem  to  inaugurate  "  the  king- 
dom of  their  father  David,"  he  had  undergone  a  total  reversal 
of  mood  during  the  day's  journey ;  for  the  whole  tension  of 
his   spirit   on   their  southern  way  had  been  that  of  heroic 
pathos  in  contemplation  of  ignominy  and  death,  and  of  com- 
passionate repression  of  his  disciples'  illusory  hopes.     He  goes, 
as  he  came,  to  "be  as  one  that  serveth,"  and  "  to  give  his 
life  a  ransom  for  many."      That  a  few  hom-s  on  the  road 
should  exchange  all  this  for  royal  pretensions,  and  that  he 
should  enter  the  gates  counting  on  the  crown  where  he  had 
expected  the  cross,  is  at  variance,  not  only  with  all  probability, 
but  with  the  narrative  of  all  that  follows.     Throughout  his 
teaching  in  the  temple,  not  a  trace  appears  of  his  playing  the 
part  of  }iin(j^  or  assuming  any  higher  tone  than  that  of  herald 
of  the  kingdom  to  come.     To  the  demand  for  his  authority, 
his  answer,  as  we  have  seen,  is  pitched  low,  and  he  shelters 
himself  from  challenge  under  the  popularity  of  the  Baptist. 
With  those  who  bring  him  ensnaring  questions  he  submits  to 
stand  on  the  defensive,  and  answers  the  problems  presented 
to  him  on  equal  terms.     And  when  the  public  hours  are  gone, 
and  he  is  left  with  his  disciples  alone,  the  same  undertone  of 
tender  sadness  is  found  still  there,  breathing  throughout  the 
converse  of  the  passover,  and  rising  into  the  passionate  tears 
and  prayers  of  Gethsemane.     That  in  the  mood  of  Jesus  the 
exulting  enthusiasm  of  the  triumphal  entry  should  be  sharply 
interpolated  in  the  midst  of   continuous  dejection  of  spirit 

*  xxi.  2-7. 


.Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      627 

under  retrospect  of  failure  and  foresight  of  death,  seems  to 
me  entirely  incredible. 

(2.)  How  it  was  that  the  evangelist  did  not  feel  the  violence 
thus  done  to  truth  of  character  becomes  intelligible  in  the 
narrative  of  Luke,  in  which  the  opposite  states  of  mind  are 
represented  as  absolutely  synchronous,  and  the  "  king  of 
glory  "  descends  into  his  metropolis  in  tears,  and  unites  the 
parts  of  "Son  of  God,"  and  "Man  of  Sorrows."  In  a 
Pauline  evangelist  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  what  this  means. 
To  him,  the  Messiahship  was  first  declared  by  the  resurrection 
fi'om  the  dead,  and  was  then  not  to  take  effect  in  act  until  the 
Parusia ;  and,  therefore,  the  present  appropriation  of  the 
office  by  Jesus  was  the  assertion  of  only  a  deferred  kingship ; 
and  as  it  was  the  unreadiness  of  Israel,  and  the  provision  for 
mercy  to  the  Gentiles,  which  demanded  both  the  delay  and 
intervening  sacrifice  of  the  chosen  servant  of  God,  the  ulterior 
glory  and  the  nearer  griefs  might  naturally  come  into  view 
together,  and  bring  the  shouts  of  "  Hosanna,"  and  the  lament 
over  the  city  into  mysterious  accord  in  the  heart  of  him  who 
knew  it  all.  Under  the  influence  of  this  conception,  Luke 
makes  Jesus  deliver  in  the  temple  the  parable  of  the  vineyard- 
owner,  whose  tenants  first  maltreated  his  rent-collector,  and 
at  last  murdered  his  son,  and  so  necessitated  their  own  evic- 
tion.* Only  at  the  cost  of  such  plain  anachronisms  is  the 
harmonizing  process  possible.  No  such  Pauline  theory  had 
any  preexistence  at  the  historic  date  :  the  acclamation  of  the 
Galileans,  "  blessed  is  the  King  that  cometh  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord," — if  that  was  their  cry, — meant  something  quite 
other  than  a  deferred  kimfship:  and  if  that  alone  were  in 
Jesus'  mind  he  cannot  have  had  part  or  lot  in  the  tumultuary 
scene.  They  were  escorting  him  to  receive  tlie  immediate 
<;rown,  w^hich  to  him  was  thrown  into  the  distance  and  hid 
behind  the  nearer  cross.  ■   .  .      -  .  •   ■     , 

(3.)  For  the  trial  of  Jesus  a  few  days  later  at  the  house  of 
Caiaphas,  witnesses  against  him  were  eagerly  hunted  up  from 
all  quarters  to  make  good  the  charge  of  treasonable  preten- 
sions which  excited  and  misled  the  people.  Yet  no  mention 
whatever  is  made  of  this  dangerous  procession,  organized  and 

•  XX.  9-18. 

s  s  2 


628  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

led  by  the  accused  aspirant  to  David's  throne.  Nothing  that 
was  adduced  against  him  was  half  as  apposite  to  the  case  of 
the  prosecution  as  this  alleged  public  act ;  and  as  from  its 
very  nature  it  must  have  passed  within  the  range  of  hundreds 
of  watchful  eyes  and  ears,  testimony  in  abundance  must  have 
been  forthcoming,  if  the  fact  took  place  as  related  in  the 
Gospels.  Not  even  his  own  alleged  acknowledgment  to  the 
court  of  a  Messianic  claim  could  avail  for  so  much,  in  deciding 
the  case,  as  this  incident  out  of  doors ;  for  the  indictment 
against  him  was  not  that  he  personally  supposed  himself  to 
be  Messiah,  but  that  by  giving  himself  out  to  be  Messiah  he 
"  deceived  the  people,"  and  occasioned  tumult  dangerous  to 
the  public  peace ;  and  of  this  no  completer  proof  could  be 
desired  than  the  entry  into  the  city  of  a  noisy  procession 
marshalled  under  the  command  and  in  the  name  of  a  new 
King.  The  silence  of  the  court  therefore  casts  a  reasonable 
doubt  on  the  historical  reality  of  the  event. 

These  difficulties  do  not  oblige  us,  however,  to  dismiss  the 
whole  scene  as  a  free  invention,  with  no  nucleus  of  fact  be- 
neath :  and  though  it  is  usually  a  vain  attempt  to  undress  an 
exaggeration  till  the  supporting  body  is  reached,  there  are  here 
a  few  data  of  determinate  form,  which  give  shape  and  limit  to 
the  variable  additions  that  may  be  thrown  around  them.  Jesus 
did  enter  Jerusalem,  accompanied  by  many  disciples  from 
Galilee.  He  came  from  Jericho  (some  nineteen  miles)  on  foot 
in  the  day.  He  brought  (let  us  assume)  simply  the  message, 
"  the  Kingdom  draweth  nigh."  The  way  was  rugged  and  toil- 
some to  the  last  degree,  over  blistered  rocks  and  j^recipitous 
steeps,  with  but  one  place  of  pause,  the  little  inn  where  the 
Good  Samaritan  left  his  wounded  traveller.  When  the  last 
height  was  surmounted,  a  few  miles  of  descent,  while  relieving 
the  strain,  would  also  report  the  fatigue  which  it  had  cost ; 
and  it  is  conceivable  enough  that  Jesus,  "  having  found  a 
young  ass  "  (as  the  fourth  evangelist  says*),  would  accept  the 
rest  which,  through  the  attentions  of  his  disciples,  it  offered 
him  for  the  two  remaining  miles  of  the  road  :  the  more  so,  as 
the  afternoon  was  already  wearing  away,  and  the  prospect  was 
before  him  of  the  walk  back  to  Bethany  for  the  night.     As 

*  John  xii.  14. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      629 

they  advanced,  there  lay  below  and  before  them  the  very  walls 
and  palaces  and  temple  of  the  "  Kingdom  to  come  :"  into  it 
they  were  escorting  the  very  herald  who  had  to  announce  its 
approach :  what  wonder  then  that  the  Galileans  devoted  to 
their  prophet,  and  fired  by  the  excitement  of  Peter  and  the 
"  sons  of  thunder,"  burst  into  uncontrollable  Hosannas  '?  In 
such  a  multitude,  the  cries  would  doubtless  have  a  various 
significance,  not  all  within  the  limits  of  Jesus'  own  sanction. 
But,  if  we  look  no  further  than  the  oldest  tradition,  he  is  cele- 
brated only  as  "/;c  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord*'  (a 
phrase  that  is  habitually  applied  to  anij  prophet):*  and  the 
advent  proclaimed  is  that  of  "  the  Khujdom  that  cometh,"  not 
of  the  K'lncj.  The  later  gospels  alone  develop  these  expressions 
into  announcements  of  the  personal  Messiah. 

On  such  a  basis  of  natural  fact  may  the  full-grown  tradition 
have  been  easily  constructed,  without  involving  any  pretension, 
on  the  part  of  Jesus,  beyond  that  of  the  herald  of  the 
Kingdom. 

See,  then,  this  witness  of  God  standing  at  last  on  the  pave- 
ment where  his  message  was  to  be  delivered,  and  looking  round 
on  all  things  at  the  time  of  the  evening  sacrifice  :  and  remem- 
bering the  springs  of  his  secret  life,  and  what  a  "  Kingdom  of 
righteousness"  must  mean  to  him,  think  how  he  would  be 
affected  by  this  sudden  contact  with  a  local  sanctuary  and  a 
blood-stained  worship,  Ivnowing  neither  place  nor  time  where 
God  is  not,  having  found  him  ever  waiting  to  enter  the 
moment  the  latch  was  lifted  of  the  seeking  heart,  assured  that 
neither  words  nor  silence,  neither  walls  nor  spaces,  could 
hinder  the  communion  of  his  Spirit  with  ours,  what  sanctity 
could  Jesus  feel  in  the  separating  courts  of  the  men  and  the 
women,  of  the  Gentiles  and  the  priests  ?  His  love  and  venera- 
tion, clinging  to  the  simple  social  piety  of  the  synagogue  in 
which  they  had  been  nurtured,  and  bringing  no  offering  but 
that  of  penitence  and  trust,  could  hardly  brook  the  sight  of 
butchering  priests  and  mangled  victims,  and  the  smell  of  burn- 
ing flesh,  once  deemed  well-pleasing  to  God,  now  odious  to 
men.  Would  the  Pontiff's  jewelled  robe  and  golden  mitre  and 
pompous  voice  edify  or  overawe  one  to  whom  heaven  was  never 

*  See,  e.g.,  Deut.  xviii.  22. 


630  THE  DIVINE  IN    THE  HUMAN.  [Book  v. 

SO  near  as  wlieii,  with  bared  head  and  naked  soul,  he  prayed 
upon  the  mountain  grass  beneath  the  stars  in  the  broken 
accents  of  a  surrendering  love?  Descending  from  so  high  and 
pure  an  air,  he  could  hardly  breathe  within  those  stifling  walls, 
where  clouds  of  incense  made  pretence  of  aspiration,  and  the 
altar  smoke  did  the  work  of  prayer.  Not  less  repugnant  to 
him  would  the  whole  scene  be  than  George  Fox  would  have 
found  a  week  of  Easter  ceremonial  observances  in  Papal  Eome: 
and  as  the  Puritan,  in  his  recoil,  flung  himself  into  the  absolute 
and  unconditional  life  of  the  Spirit,  so  is  it  no  wonder  if  Jesus, 
in  the  new  kingdom  of  righteousness  which  he  announced, 
"  Saw  no  temple  therein,  for  the  Lord  God  Almighty  and  the 
Lamb  are  the  temple  thereof."*  Nor  could  he  doubt,  from 
the  series  of  tricky  questions  brought  to  him  each  day  by 
smooth-faced  lawyers  amid  listening  priests,  that  the  whole 
sj'stem  of  second-hand  life,  of  ritual  religion  and  legalism  in 
morals,  hung  together,  as  a  conspiracy  for  evading  the  divine 
realities.  The  very  drift,  therefore,  of  his  own  inspiration 
brought  it  to  pass  that  his  few  days  in  the  temple  opened  with 
the  act  of  cleansing  enthusiasm  which  swept  a  host  of  usurping 
hindrances  away,t  and  closed  with  emphatic  warnings  against 
the  scribes  and  their  burdensome  impostures.  \  Nay,  so  over- 
mastering was  the  vision  of  the  inner  life  of  man  with  God, 
and  his  zeal  for  realizing  it,  and  so  far  transcending  the 
apprehension  of  his  disciples,  that  we  owe  to  his  enemies  its 
sublimest  and  most  characteristic  expression.  It  was  from  the 
lips  of  the  accusers  at  his  trial,  denounced  by  the  evangelist  as 
"  false  witnesses,"  that  we  first  heard  him  say,  "I  will  destroy 
this  temple  made  with  hands,  and  in  three  days  will  build 
another  made  without  hands :"§  a  passionate  cry,  truly, 
wrung  from  the  grief  and  aspiration  of  an  intense  ex- 
perience and  an  infinite  faith, — meaning  simply,  '  Away 
with  these  material  walls  and  works,  which  only  im- 
prison you  from  the  very  God  they  are  supposed  to  contain  ; 
and  come  with  me  to  seek  him,  spirit  to  spirit,  and 
ere  the  next  sabbath  you  shall  be  united  to  him  in  a  com- 
munion that  is  imperishable.'     The  sacerdotal  conscience  felt 

*  Rev.  xxi.  22.  f  Mark  xi.  15-18. 

J  Mark  xii.  33-40.  §  Mark  xiv.  57,  53. 


Chap.  II.]      THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      631 

the  shock,  though  bhncled  by  the  light,  of  this  flash  from  a 
frowning  heaven,  and  treated  it  as  the  unpardonable  stroke 
that  must  be  resented  to  the  death.  No  further  witnesses  were 
called  ;  and  the  decisive  influence  it  had  on  the  condemnation 
is  evinced  by  the  taunt  of  the  onlookers  at  the  crucifixion  : 
"  They  that  passed  by  railed  on  him,  wagging  their  heads  and 
saying,  '  Ha  !  thou  that  destroyest  the  temple  and  buildest  it 
in  three  days,  save  thyself  and  come  down  from  the  cross.'  "* 
How  deeply  the  saying  penetrated  the  souls  ready  for  its 
touch,  whether  of  love  or  hate,  is  evident  from  its  reappear- 
ance in  the  story  of  Stephen,  in  whom  it  repeated  both  its 
inspiration  and  its  martyrdom :  for  against  him  too  the  in- 
dictment was,  that  "This  man  ceaseth  not  to  speak  words 
against  this  holy  place  and  the  Law  :  for  we  have  heard  him 
say  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  shall  destroy  this  place  and  shall 
change  the  customs  which  Moses  delivered  unto  us."f  In 
answer  to  the  question  how  it  could  be  that  the  most  national 
and  rigidly  exclusive  of  all  cults  became  the  historical  source 
of  a  religion  spiritual  and  universal,  great  use  has  been  often, 
and  justly,  made  of  Stephen  and  the  Hellenists,  in  whose 
colonial  life,  away  from  "  the  scribes  who  sat  in  Moses'  seat," 
the  hard  lines  faded  and  the  ideal  depths  were  opened,  of 
their  pure  theism ;  and  again,  from  the  fire  and  the  fate  of 
Stephen,  dying  into  the  visible  embrace  of  Christ  in  heaven,. 
have  been  deduced  the  compunction  and  conversion  of  Saul,, 
with  his  bolder  annulment  of  the  Law  and  larger  gospel  of 
the  Gentiles  :  while  to  the  fusion  together  in  Alexandria  of 
the  Jewish  and  the  heathen  thought,  has  been  credited  that 
consciousness  of  God  as  immanent  in  the  world  and  in 
human  life,  in  which  the  religion  reaches  its  supreme  altitude 
and  widest  range.  These  are  doubtless  stages  of  development 
historically  verifiable :  but  they  tell  only  a  mutilated  story, 
till  you  pass  behind  them  all,  and  ask  the  *  Whence  '  of 
Stephen's  divine  enthusiasm  :  and  this  he  himself  here  re- 
ports, when  he  refers  it  to  the  great  dictum  of  Jesus,  and  his 

*  Mark  xv.  29,  30.  .   "      . 

t  Acts  vi.  13,  14.  Luke,  however,  who  here  mentions  in  substance  the 
alleged  saying  of  Jesus  as  (juoted  by  Stephen,  has  no  notice  of  it  in  its  gospel 
place,  as  playing  any  part  at  the  trial  before  Caiaphas.  And  he  transfers  the 
expression  '■'■  false,  witnesses  "  to  the  charge  against  Stephen. 


632  THE  DIVINE   IN   THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

infinite  longing  to  open  the  soul  of  man  to  the  life  in  God, 
unhindered  by  the  mediation  of  priest  and  ritual.  Thus  the 
fountain  of  all  catholicity  is  in  no  confluence  of  philosophies, 
no  combination  of  external  conditions,  but  in  the  unique 
l^ersonality  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  That  was  the  fresh  and 
quickening  power  which  broke  into  new  fields  of  human  love 
and  character  :  all  else  did  but  furnish  the  predisposed  condi- 
tions of  susceptibility  which  saved  that  living  power  from 
spending  itself  in  vain. 

The  answers  given  by  Jesus  to  the  polite  and  learned  spies 
who  met  him  in  the  temple  each  morning  with  their  budget 
of  dilemmas  are  interesting  alike  in  their  reserves  and  their 
•disclosures.  To  embroil  him  with  either  the  Koman  govern- 
ment or  the  zealot  opposition  came  the  question  of  the  tribute- 
money  ;  neatly  declined  and  thrown  back  upon  themselves  by 
the  production  of  the  coin  with  the  imperial  "  image  and 
superscription,"  and  the  memorable  epigram  which  is  still 
the  motto  of  treatise  after  treatise  on  the  boundary  between 
the  spheres  of  State  and  Church  ;  "  give  therefore  unto  Cfesar 
the  things  that  are  Csesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  that 
are  God's."  It  is  said,  "  This  is  an  evasion  of  the  question. 
Of  course  it  is :  and  precisely  in  this  lies  the  pertinent  signi- 
ficance of  the  reply.  The  question  was  one  which  Jesus  could 
not  be  called  upon  to  solve  ;  it  was  not  for  the  prophet  but  for 
the  schools  ;  depending  for  its  determination,  not  on  the  right 
understanding  of  the  inward  and  spiritual  life,  but  on  a  true 
judgment  of  external  and  political  conditions.  The  currency  of 
the  coinage  was  evidence  of  some  relations  from  the  admission 
of  which  duties,  whether  welcome  or  not,  were  inseparable  : 
and  all  duty  is  divine  in  the  last  resort,  though  delivered  in 
the  form  of  obligation  to  man.  Eeligion  therefore  covers  both 
spheres,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  defining  the  limits  of  civil 
life,  beyond  securing  the  conscientious  exercise  of  reason  in  the 
work.  Jesus  therefore  declines  the  functions  of  the  jurists,  but 
lifts  their  results  into  the  adoption  of  duty  sacred  like  the  rest. 
From  a  still  deeper  perspective  of  his  thought  a  gleam 
comes  in  the  answer  of  Jesus  to  the  coarse  plea  of  the  Sad- 
ducees  against  the  doctrine  of  a  Eesurrection.*     The  prevail- 

■*  Mark  xii.  18-27. 


Chap.  II.]      THE   RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      633 

ing  belief,  which  was  the  topic  of  dispute,  insisted  only  on  a 
restoration  of  pious  Israelites  from  former  generations,  to 
share  with  the  living  upon  earth  the  kingdom  which  Messiah 
Avould  be  appointed  to  set  up.  First  addressing  himself  to  the 
jDroblem  of  the  seven  brothers  successively  married  to  the  same 
wife,  Jesus  quietly  sets  it  aside  by  discharging  from  that 
future  kingdom,  notwithstanding  its  locality  on  earth,  all 
relations  except  such  as  angels  may  have,  and  so  leaving  us, 
as  his  vision  of  perfect  existence,  a  society  linked  together  by 
ties  of  pure  affection  and  growing  similitude  to  God.  But 
the  question,  it  is  evident,  had  struck  a  finer  chord  that  will 
not  be  silent  ;  and  he  adds  an  argument  of  larger  scope  to 
show,  not  simply  that  the  dead  kWI  rise,  but  that  the  dead  do 
live,  and  that  man,  once  trusted  with  responsible  life,  must 
share  the  perpetuit}^  of  God.  This  argument  he  draws  from 
the  ancient  names  under  which  Jehovah  has  chosen  to  hand 
down  the  knowledge  of  himself  to  distant  generations,  and 
which  his  absolute  veracity  secures  against  the  least  un- 
meaningness.  'Does  he  not  say,  "lam  the  God  of  your 
fathers,  the  God  of  Abraham,  the  God  of  Isaac  and  of 
Jacob"?  and  at  the  same  time  forbid  you  to  construe  these 
into  a  2J«.si  relation,  as  if  he  had  said,  '  I  am  he  that  was  the 
God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac  and  of  Jacob,'  by  expressly  insisting 
on  the  2^)'esent  tense  as  alone  appropriate  to  Him  and  so  truly 
constituting  the  essence  of  his  name,  that  Moses  is  charged  to 
say,  "  I  Am  hath  sent  me  unto  you."*  This  surely  means 
that  He  is  as  well  as  ifas,  the  God  of  the  fathers  :  for  the 
2)hrase  would  be  a  mockery  if  he  had  made  away  with  them, 
and  they  were  not :  the  dead  can  have  no  God  :  to  the  living 
only  can  He,  the  ever-living,  stand  related.'  Say  what  we 
may  of  this  plea,  characteristic  of  an  expanding  thought 
which  had  to  extort  the  truth  it  craved  by  struggling  with  a 
text  it  could  not  change,  it  opens  a  deep  glance  into  the  mind 
of  Jesus.  It  proclaims,  as  an  element  of  his  religion,  the 
impossibility  of  human  death.  It  insists  that  where  once  the 
moral  union  is  realized  between  the  all-loving  God  and  the 
spirits  which  he  loves  and  trains  into  his  likeness  and  draws 
towards  himself,  it  becomes  incredible  that  he  should  destroy 

*  Excd.  iii.  14,  15. 


63^  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

that  union,  and  put  an  end  to  the  very  object  of  his  culture 
and  affection.  By  this  hint  of  truest  insight  Jesus  did  but 
say  for  all,  that  which  his  disciples  applied  from  sacred 
writ  to  him,  "  Thou  wilt  not  suffer  thy  holy  one  to  see 
corruption !  " 

Among  the  listeners  to  this  colloquy  with  the  Sadducees 
was  a  scribe  determined  to  follow  it  up  by  a  question  so 
fundamental  as  to  lay  bare  the  very  basis  of  all  his  teaching, 
"  What  is  the  first  commandment  of  all  ?  "*  According  to 
Matthew  and  Luke,  the  inquiry,  like  the  previous  one,  was 
captious,  intended  as  a  trap  to  catch  him  in  his  words :  with 
more  probability,  Mark  treats  it  as  serious,  and  elicited  by 
admiration  for  the  wisdom  of  his  preceding  answer.  The 
reply  of  Jesus,  instead  of  selecting  from  among  the  command- 
ments that  which  is  chief,  sums  them  all  up  in  two,  the  love 
of  God  as  supreme,  and,  as  its  counterpart,  the  love  of  one's 
neighbour  as  oneself;  neither  of  them,  it  will  be  observed, 
prohibitive  rules  of  action  pressing  on  the  will ;  both  of  them 
inward  and  creative  affections  carrying  us  out  of  ourselves  to 
objects  in  the  one  case  of  infinite  devotion,  in  the  other  of 
finite  sympathy  and  equal  fellowship  ;  and  together  covering 
all  the  demands  of  the  law  and  the  aspirations  of  the  prophets. 
The  scribe  seizes  the  scope  and  spirituality  of  the  answer, 
when  he  exclaims  that  to  live  in  conformity  with  it  is  "more 
than  all  whole  burnt -offerings  and  sacrifices,"  and  so  draws 
upon  himself  the  parting  words  "  Thou  art  not  far  from  the 
kingdom  of  heaven."  Can  it  be  denied  that  to  one  who  thinks 
thus,  the  kingdom  of  heaven  which  he  announces  includes  the 
perfection  of  human  life  pervaded  by  the  sublimest  of  human 
religions  ? 

Notwithstanding  the  elevated  spiritual  tone  of  these  "  teach- 
ings daily  in  the  temple,"  there  was  nothing  in  them  directly 
at  variance  with  the  prevailing  Messianic  idea,  of  a  crisis  of 

*  Mark  xii.  28-34 ;  Matt,  xxii.  34-40 ;  Luke  x.  25-28  :  Where  Jesus,  in- 
stead of  himself  specifying  the  two  chief  commandments,  elicits  them  from 
the  "  lawyer,"  and  gives  approval  to  the  answer,  instead  of  receiving  it  from 
him.  The  original  question,  too,  is  not  about  the  relative  rank  of  the  com- 
mandments, but  about  the  condition  of  "inheriting  eternal  life."  I  need 
not  say  that  "thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself"  is  not  among  tlie 
ten  commandments,  but  appears  in  Levit.  xix.  18. 


Chap.  IL]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      635 

Divine  revolution  in  human  affairs,  which  should  remove 
"  whatever  hurts  and  destroys  in  all  the  earth,"  and  set  up, 
mider  a  commissioned  Son  of  God,  a  rule  of  perfect  righteous- 
ness and  a  worship  true  to  the  real  relation  between  God's 
spirit  and  man's.  They  might  all  come  from  one  who  still 
held  by  that  supposed  vision  of  the  prophet's,  and  had  a 
necessity  laid  upon  him  of  declaring  it  near  at  hand.  So  far 
he  had  a  thought  and  faith  in  common  with  his  immediate 
disciples.  But  the  interior  contents  of  that  common  faith  are 
by  no  means  the  same  for  him  and  them  ;  and  with  the  change 
of  scene  to  Jerusalem,  and  every  day's  experience  there,  have 
become  more  and  more  divergent :  the  imposing  ceremonial 
of  the  temple  and  the  dignity  of  the  hierarch}' ,  and  the  sight 
of  mount  Zion,  the  centre  of  memories  and  prophecies  so 
great,  intensifying  in  them  every  temporal  hope,  and  quicken- 
ing in  him  every  spiritual  aspiration.  More  and  more  does 
he  despair  of  making  ready  here  a  holy  people  and  a  true  city 
"  of  God  :  less  and  less  can  they  forego  their  suspicion  that  he 
himself  is  Messiah,  and,  in  spite  of  the  darkening  outlook, 
will  soon  emerge  from  the  herald  to  the  King.  On  their 
imagination  thus  preoccupied  his  highest  teachings  in  the 
temple  would  lay  no  effective  hold,  but  would  rather  make 
them  impatient  for  some  practical  move  towards  the  issue 
which  he  announced :  the  more  so,  as  the  hostility  of  the 
priestly  party  might  be  entirely  neutralized  by  the  favour  of 
*'  the  common  people  who  heard  him  gladly."  "Was  it  perhaps 
from  this  variance  of  his  feeling  from  theirs,  that  he  never 
trusted  them  in  .Judiiea,  as  he  had  in  Galilee,  to  seek  their 
own  audiences  as  sub-agents  of  his  mission  ?  He  keeps  them 
close  to  him  and  assigns  them  no  part.  At  this  maturest  end 
of  their  association  with  him,  they  appear  only  as  silent 
listeners  and  learners,  unavailable  as  missionaries.  That 
the  questions  which  in  private  they  are  supposed  by  the 
synoptists  to  have  put  to  him  have  no  reference  whatever  to 
any  spiritual  teachings  that  might  transcend  them,  but  only 
to  unhistorical  prophecies  connected  with  the  Parusia,  may 
be  taken  as  a  vestige  of  the  ideas  of  which  their  minds  were 
full.  That  the  answer  to  them  is  apparently  an  excerpt 
from  a  posterior  Jewish  apocalypse  shows  how  far,  in  order 


636  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

to  meet  them,  you  must  travel  from  the  thoughts  and  words 
of  Jesus. 

As  the  tragedy  deepens,  these  divergent  states  of  mind 
become  more  conspicuous.  The  passover  evening,  by  its 
disheartening  disclosure  of  the  disciples'  inapprehensiveness, 
indicated  that  the  closing  scene  was  at  hand.  Iscariot  him- 
self, it  is  probable,  did  not  intend  what  he  brought  to  pass  ; 
but  (with  whatever  taint  of  lower  motives)  did  but  push  to  its 
extremity  an  impatience  felt  by  all  at  the  slowness  of  Jesus 
to  assert  his  supposed  Messianic  prerogative  (with  the  aid,  if 
need  be,  of  "  twelve  legions  of  angels  "),  and  resolve  to  force 
his  hand  by  driving  him  to  bay.  The  fatal  failure  of  this 
design,  coming  upon  Judas  as  a  dread  surprise,  better  accounts 
for  his  subsequent  horror  and  death  than  the  faint  measure 
of  compunction  which  can  be  attributed  to  a  cold-blooded 
traitor,  accomplishing  what  he  intended. 

It  is  hardly  possible,  by  the  aid  of  our  synoptists,  to  trans- 
port ourselves  back  to  the  position  of  an  observer  witnessing 
the  incidents  of  the  Passion-week  as  thev  arose,  and  the 
persons  as  they  lived  and  thought ;  because  events  define 
themselves  in  happening  and  persons  in  acting ;  and  the 
tradition  of  them,  on  its  way  to  literary  form,  takes  them  up 
in  this  finished  shape  and  divests  them  of  all  that  is  inchoate 
and  gradual  in  their  genesis.  For  its  tendency,  thus  contracted, 
to  strong  contrasts  and  absolute  statements  reasonable  allow- 
ance must  be  made,  and  sudden  surprises  be  softened  by  the 
intervention  of  an  intelligible  process.  That  Judas  planned 
to  bring  his  Master  to  public  execution ;  that  Jesus,  knowing 
this,  openly  pointed  him  out  as  traitor  to  his  comrades  at 
table ;  that  Jesus  foresaw  and  announced  as  certain,  nay, 
himself  willed  his  own  crucifixion,  cannot  be  regarded  as 
probable,  but  may  well  have  passed  into  belief  from  the 
simpler  facts  that  the  betrayer,  like  Satan  in  the  temptation, 
proposed  to  put  an  end  to  all  shrinking  and  compel  the 
assumption  of  Messiahship  by  planting  Jesus  in  a  perilous 
position ;  that  his  design,  being  more  than  suspected,  was 
confidentially  intimated  to  one  or  two  of  the  eleven  ;  and 
that  the  presentiment,  already  avowed  by  Jesus,  of  a  fatal 
issue  of  his  Jerusalem  mission,  became  confirmed  and  gave 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      637 

the  ill-understood  pathos  to  the  converse  and  the  hymn  of 
the  paschal  night. 

If  these  were  the  conditions,  Judas  would  not,  as  the  fourth 
gospel  represents,  rise  and  leave  the  room  by  himself,  but  join 
in  the  common  departure  for  the  Mount  of  Olives,  and  slip 
away  from  the  rest  at  the  entrance  to  the  footway  over  Kedron. 
While  he  turned  aside  to  carry  out  his  purpose  in  the  city,  the 
little  band,  pursuing  their  way  up  the  hill,  were  again  warned 
that  the  end  was  at  hand,  and  that,  when  the  shepherd  was 
smitten,  the  sheep  in  their  dismay  would  be  scattered  abroad  : 
even  Peter,  who  alone  would  dare  to  hang  about  the  rear  of 
his  Master's  danger,  being  cautioned  that  by  too  much  trust 
in  his  own  courage  he  would  be  betrayed  into  denial  worse 
than  flight.  That  they  should  be  simply  hurt  by  these  pre- 
dictions, and  meet  them,  after  the  example  of  Peter,  with 
confident  professions  of  fidelity,  could  hardly  be  if  they 
accepted  in  earnest  the  whole  terror  of  the  crisis :  they  were 
perhaps  sustained  by  the  secret  excitement  of  a  lingering  in- 
credulity, or,  we  may  rather  say,  some  lurking  faith  that,  at 
the  last  moment,  some  divine  turn  would  open  a  way  for  the 
triumph  of  Eight. 

Having  prepared  them  as  far  as  their  prepossessions  allowed, 
and  arrived  at  the  enclosure  which  separated  Gethsemane 
from  the  open  hill,  Jesus,  more  intensely  solitary  from  the 
recent  converse,  had  his  own  darkest  hour  to  meet.  He  flew 
to  the  only  refuge  where  he  could  lay  his  heart  to  rest ;  and 
withdrawing  from  his  attendants,  and  taking  with  him  Peter 
and  the  Zebedee  brothers  to  keep  watch  and  give  notice 
against  surprise,  he  retired  to  a  remoter  spot,  where  he  could 
be  alone  with  the  silent  moonlight  and  the  listening  God. 
There  he  fell  on  the  ground,  prostrate  with  a  sorrow  even 
unto  death  :  and  his  sentinels,  ere  they  dropped  oft'  into  sleep, 
overheard  his  suppliant  cry,  "  Abba,  Father,  all  things  are 
possible  to  thee :  remove  this  cup  from  me  :  howbeit,  not 
what  I  will,  but  what  thou  wilt  "  :*  and  twice,  in  the  intervals 
of  their  sleep,  was  the  prayer  repeated,  ere  his  will  was 
surrendered  and  he  released  them  from  their  watch.  With  a 
final  calmness  he  looked  at  them  and  said,  "  Sleep  on  now, 

♦  i\rark  xiv.  36. 


638  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

and  take  your  rest ;  it  is  enough  :  the  hour  is  come :  the  Son 
of  man  is  betrayed  into  the  hands  of  sinners." 

It  has  long  been  felt  that  to  this  "  agony  in  the  garden  " 
and  its  words  of  prayer  a  great  significance  attaches  ;  and 
that  to  read  in  them  aright  the  state  of  mind  which  they 
presuppose  must  deepen  our  insight  into  the  thought  and 
character  of  Jesus.  May  we  not,  for  instance,  fairly  infer 
from  them  that  for  him  the  possibility  was  not  yet  closed, 
that  this  "cup  might  pass  from  him,"  and  that  the  will  of 
God  might  still  determine  otherwise  ?  If  so,  his  own  expec- 
tations were  in  suspense  to  this  latest  hour,  and  he  cannot 
have  delivered  to  his  disciples,  three  or  four  times  over  since 
Peter's  confession,  the  most  positive  and  detailed  predictions 
of  his  death  in  Jerusalem  and  reappearance  in  Galilee  ;  and 
we  are  justified  in  reducing  these  announcements,  if  retained 
at  all,  to  natural  presentiments  of  danger.  It  is  further 
evident  that,  in  deeming  his  fate  not  predetermined,  but  still 
at  voluntary  disposal,  Jesus  must  have  looked  on  it  not  as  the 
fate  of  Messiah  who  had  to  die  in  fulfilment  of  the  oracles  of 
God,  but  only  as  that  of  a  herald  of  the  kingdom  whose 
message  might  provoke,  as  in  the  Baptist's  case,  or  might 
escape,  the  vengeance  of  murderous  hands.  Had  he  really 
conceived  himself  to  be  Messiah,  and  in  that  character 
described  and  approximately  dated  his  "  coming  on  the  clouds 
of  heaven  in  power  and  great  glory,"  with  all  the  premonitory 
signs  and  the  judicial  consequences,  how,  after  that,  could  he 
possibly  pray  for  leave  to  stay  in  this  world  and  dispense  with 
the  Parusia  ? 

And  if  this  prayer  is  inconsistent  with  a  sincere  illusion  of 
Messiahship,  still  more  decisively  is  it  incompatible  with  the 
only  other  suppositions  possible  :  viz.  (1.)  Pienan's,  of  the  rash 
assumption  or  acceptance  of  too  high  a  character,  from  which, 
when  once  committed  to  it,  he  would  not  recede,  though  per- 
sistence was  at  the  cost  of  life ;  and  (2.)  the  Church  belief 
that,  as  the  incarnate  Son,  he  had  for  ages  planned,  and 
through  the  prophets  foreannounced,  the  very  drama  which 
he  had  now  wrought  out  to  its  last  scene,  whose  tragic  close 
was  to  be  also  its  glorious  consummation.  With  each  of  these 
doctrines  confront  the  cry,  "  Father,  take  away  this  cup  from 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      639 

me:  howbeit,  not  as  I  will,  but  as  thou  wilt."  Must  we  not 
say  that  if  the  bitter  cup  here  deprecated  were  the  self-incurred 
penalty  of  inflated  pretensions  which  collapsed  at  the  touch 
of  reality,  the  submissive  ending  could  not  be  there :  and 
that  if,  on  the  other  hand,  that  bitter  cup  were  the  crown  of 
the  whole  history,  contemplated  throughout  by  the  sufferer 
himself  as  the  essence  of  God's  design  in  him,  the  imploring 
beginning  could  not  be  there  ?  When  w^as  it  ever  known  that 
detected  self-exaggeration,  caught  in  its  own  trap,  poured 
forth  a  "Not  as  I  will,  but  as  thou  wilt"?  And  how  could 
a  Eedeemer,  brought  to  the  appointed  crisis,  ask  to  be 
spared  the  very  "  cup"  he  had  come  to  take'?  All  congruity 
of  character  is  lost,  and  the  whole  scene  reduced  to  a  mere 
stage-piece,  unless  the  cross  were  unseen  till  its  approach,  and 
were  incurred,  not  by  overweening  profession  and  half-con- 
scious falsehood,  but  by  the  purest  truth.  Here  surely  we 
have  the  genuine  cry  of  innocence  and  sanctity,  first  shrinking 
from  the  crushing  heel  of  men,  then  sheltering  in  the  eternal 
hand  of  God.  The  sufferer  is  so  far  from  courting  martyrdom, 
that  his  "will,"  if  that  were  all,  simply  recoils  from  it;  and 
if  it  comes,  it  is  from  the  higher  "  Will  "  than  his,  from  the 
severe  exactions  of  truth  and  holiness  to  which  nothing  can 
be  refused.  The  darkness  of  that  hour  is  evidently  due  to 
the  collision  at  last  brought  to  a  head  between  the  pure 
and  ideal  "  kingdom  of  God  "  which  Jesus  announced  as  near, 
and  the  hollow  sacerdotalism  of  the  place,  the  unready  and 
refractory  temper  of  the  people,  that  were  to  form  the  site 
and  furnish  the  population  of  the  "  City  of  God."  He  could 
not  deny  his  vision  of  the  new  relation  between  man  and 
God :  he  knew  it  to  be  true  to  the  human  soul  and  to  the 
Divine  intent,  and  he  could  withdraw  no  word  of  witness  to 
it.  And  yet  to  reaffirm  it  was  to  tear  the  mask  from  the  face 
of  priests,  and  the  pride  from  the  pretensions  of  sects  and 
parties  :  and  the  clearer  the  testimony  he  bore  to  things 
divine  the  easier  it  was  to  prove  him  an  insurgent  against  the 
powers  that  be,  and  to  make  away  with  him  as  a  blasphemer. 
Against  the  Tioman  civil  power,  however,  he  had  assumed 
no  insurgent  attitude,  but  only  against  the  Israelitish 
authorities  that  "  sat  in  Moses'  seat,"  or  Aaron's  :  and  unless 


640  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN  [Book  V. 

the  former  could  be  established  no  capital  sentence  could  be 
obtained.  In  order  to  make  the  governor  the  executioner  of 
their  own  vengeance,  the  chief  priests  had  therefore  to  put  a 
false  construction  on  the  teachings  of  Jesus  in  the  Temple, 
and  to  suborn  witnesses  in  support  of  their  fictitious  case. 
This  was  most  easily  done  by  a  nocturnal  arrest  and  a  hurried 
sitting  of  the  court  of  first  instance  before  dawoi,  ere  any 
evidence  could  be  ready  to  check  and  contradict  the  got-up 
testimony.  Hence  the  dignified  protest  of  Jesus  against  the 
clandestine  mode  of  apprehending  him,  with  hypocritical 
ostentation  of  military  force,  as  if  he  and  his  disciples  were 
prowling  bandits  of  the  night :  "  Are  ye  come  out,  as  against 
a  robber,  with  swords  and  staves  to  seize  me '?  I  was  daily 
with  you  in  the  temple,  teaching,  and  ye  took  me  not  :  but 
this  is  your  hour,  and  the  power  of  darkness."*  Eagerly  do 
the  disciples  watch  him  through  these  words ;  and  seeing  that 
he  is  content  with  them  and  invokes  no  rescue,  but  allows 
himself  to  be  seized,  they  forsook  him  and  fled,  doubtless  to 
Galilee,  each,  as  the  fourth  gospel  says,  to  his  own  home,t 
Peter  alone  lingering  and  "  following  afar  off." 

The  object  of  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  before  whom  the 
prisoner  was  brought  in  the  High  Priest's  house  was  not  to 
conduct  a  trial  (which  was  beyond  their  competency),  but  to 
shape  an  indictment  and  prepare  a  case,  to  be  brought  for 
decision  into  Pilate's  court.  To  secure  a  hearing,  it  needed 
adoption  by  a  regular  meeting  of  the  Sanhedrim,  constituted 
by  a  quorum  of  one-third  the  total  number,  i.e.,  twenty-three 
besides  the  High  Priest  presiding.  So  many  could  hardly  be  got 
together  by  first  daylight ;  but  if  the  members  chiefly  interested 
and  already  present  when  the  captive  was  brought  in  acted  at 
once  as  a  committee  of  examination,  the  evidence  could  be  got 
into  order,  and  a  preliminary  judgment  be  formed,  which  the 
regular  meeting  after  sunrise  would  probably  confirm.  The 
device  succeeded  perfectly  so  far  as  the  unanimous  shaping  of 
the  indictment  was  concerned:  it  charged  Jesus  with  "per- 
verting the  nation,  with  forbidding  to  give  tribute  to  Csesar, 
saying  that  he  himself  was  Christ  a  King." I     But,  for  all 

*  Mark  xiv.  48,  49  ;  Matt.  xxvi.  55  ;  Luke  xxii.  52,  53. 
f  John  xvi.  32.  +  Luke  xxiii.  2. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.       641 

that  appears,  absolutely  no  evidence  whatever  was  forth- 
coming relative  to  any  of  these  counts,  so  that  not  even  was 
the  opportunity  afforded  of  disproving  them.  Neither  the 
alleged  triumphal  procession  on  entering  Jerusalem,  nor  the 
high-handed  act  of  the  cleansing  of  the  temple,  either  of  which 
might  perhaps  have  been  turned  to  some  account  by  a  skilful 
advocate,  is  so  much  as  mentioned  ;  and  the  case,  as  reported, 
is  left  dependent  on  the  saying  about  destroying  the  temple 
and  replacing  it  in  three  days.  As  to  the  demeanour  of  Jesus 
in  presence  of  this  irrelevant  evidence,  the  only  thing  secured 
from  doubt  by  the  agreement  of  the  synoptists  is  that  he 
"  held  his  peace  and  answered  nothing."*  Not  till  the  judges, 
having  done  with  the  witnesses  and  their  evidence,  press  him 
to  say  for  himself  whether  he  be  the  Christ,  is  he  said  to  break 
silence  and  give  (according  to  Mark  and  Matthew)  a  direct 
assent ;  or  (according  to  Luke)  a  dubious  answer,  which 
affirms  indeed  the  coming  of  the  "  Son  of  Man,"  but,  as 
Marcion  has  pointed  out,i-  leaves  with  his  questioners  the 
responsibility  of  identifying  him  with  that  "Son  of  God": 
"Art  thou  then  the  Son  of  God?  ye  say  that  I  am  "  {v[xuq 
XfyfTE  tin  tyoO  {i\xi).  If  he  had  wished  to  say  '  I  admit  and 
repeat  my  announcement  of  the  kingdom,  but  it  is  you  that 
would  make  me  out  self- identified  with  the  king,'  he  could 
hardly  throw  his  answer  into  terser  form.  I  have  given 
reasons,  in  a  former  chapter,  for  distrusting  the  historical 
accuracy  of  this  closing  incident  in  the  examination,  and 
deeming  it  incredible  that  Jesus,  after  peremptorily  forbidding 
all  claim  of  Messiahship  on  his  behalf,  and  so  refraining  from 
it  himself  that  no  evidence  of  it  should  be  producible  by  his 
inquisitors,  should  choose  this  untoward  moment  for  the 
occasion  and  this  malignant  audience  for  the  confidant,  of  his 
first  open  profession.  But  even  if  it  were  so,  such  a  belief 
about  himself,  extorted  from  the  prisoner's  enthusiasm  or 
imprudence  in  the  court,  would  be  of  no  avail  in  proof  of  the 
indictment,  which  specified  only  past  acts  and  needed  past 
eyes  and  ears  to  establish  their  reality  and  their  character. 
If  the  alleged  acceptance  in  court  of  the  ]\Iessianic  claim  was 

*  ^lark  xiv.  Gl ;  Matt.  xxvi.  G3.     Cf.  Luke  xxii.  67,  68. 
f  Tcrt.  cout.  jMarcioucm,  IV.  11. 

I    T 


642  THE  DIVINE   IN   THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

an  indictable  offence,  it  was  a  newly  committed  offence  which, 
in  its  turn,  must  be  tried  on  its  own  merits,  and  it  could  in  no 
wise  turn  the  verdict  on  the  prior  charge  from  '  not  guilty '  to 
*  guilty.'  This  uselessness  for  the  purposes  of  the  trial,  and 
accordance  with  the  subsequent  Messianic  theory  of  the  dis- 
ciples, of  the  alleged  declaration  of  Jesus  to  the  High  Priest, 
taken  in  conjunction  with  its  reduction  to  lower  terms  in 
Luke,  involve  its  historical  character  in  the  greatest  doubt. 
It  comes  to  us  out  of  the  dark,  attested  by  no  authenticating 
witness  ;  for  Peter,  though  in  the  building,  was  out  of  hearing 
in  the  court  below,  where  his  denial  took  place,  and  whence, 
as  he  disappears  from  the  scene,  he  probably  fled,  like  the 
rest,  into  Galilee, — the  last  sheep  of  the  scattered  flock. 

But  even  though  no  Messianic  claim  were  wrung  from 
Jesus,  none  the  less  was  it  charged  upon  him  in  the  indict- 
ment, being  the  only  conceivable  way  of  bringing  him,  as  a 
royal  pretender,  under  the  death-penalty  of  lam  majcstas. 
How  ineffectual  for  this  purpose,  and  even  contemptible, 
Pilate  deemed  it,  when  the  case  was  brought  into  his  court, 
is  evident  from  this,  that,  though  Jesus  is  again  said  to  have 
admitted  that,  as  Christ,  he  cannot  disclaim  the  title  of 
"  King  of  the  Jews," — an  admission  tantamount  to  pleading 
'  guilty,'' — the  Governor  declares  "  to  the  Chief  Priests  and 
i\\Q  TLm\.iii\x({Q^,  I  find  no  fault  in  this  man,'"  and  proposes  to 
let  him  go.  This  is  as  much  as  to  say,  '  a  man's  belief 
about  himself,  however  fanatical,  is  no  crime :  show  me 
that,  acting  upon  it,  he  has  resisted  the  law  or  raised  an 
insurrection,  or  anyhow  infringed  the  rights  of  others,  and 
he  shall  be  condemned  to  the  appropriate  penalty,  though 
it  be  death :  but  your  witnesses  have  proved  nothing  of 
the  sort  :  so  you  put  yourselves  forward  as  witnesses,  with 
nothing  to  say  except  that  he  takes  to  himself  the  benefit 
and  the  peril  of  one  of  your  own  silly  superstitions.'  That 
a  Eoman  administrator  capable  of  taking  this  sensible  view 
of  a  case  so  dishonestly  got  up  should  nevertheless  suffer 
his  sense  of  justice  to  be  overborne  by  the  outcry  of  a 
threatening  priesthood  and  a  noisy  populace,  exclaiming,  '  If 
thou  let  this  man  go,  thou  art  not   Caesar's  friend,'*  is  indeed 

*  John  xix.  12. 


Chap.  II.]      THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      643 

deplorable,  but  only  too  credible  in  that  age  of  decay  of  the 
civil  virtues. 

The  trial  over  and  the  sentence  passed,  the  story  of  Jesus 
becomes  essentially  one  of  passive  suffering  onl}^  pervaded 
by  the  same  gracious  affections  and  divine  trusts  that  had 
given  it  throughout  a  radiance  of  spiritual  glory.  But  in 
passing  from  the  agent  to  the  victim,  he  could  but  carry  the 
personal  characteristics  which  we  have  marked  to  their 
supreme  test  :  they  can  take  on  nothing  new,  but  only  perfect 
themselves  in  their  intensest  strain.  The  only  features  there- 
fore in  the  narratives  of  the  crucifixion  which  belong  to  the 
right  conception  of  his  personality  are  what  are  called  his 
seven  last  words  uttered  from  the  cross.  They  cannot  be 
divested  of  their  interest  as  expressions  of  himself :  though, 
like  all  the  sayings  of  dying  men,  liable  to  be  charged  with  an 
illusory  significance,  seeing  that  they  are  often  wrenched 
without  will  from  a  spent  and  crushed  nature,  and  reveal 
the  mind  no  more  than  the  wanderings  of  a  dream  or  of 
delirium. 

The  seven  words  are  made  up  in  the  usual  way  of  the 
Harmonists,  by  combining  all  that  can  be  found  in  any 
evangelist ;  though  the  fair  presumption  certainly  is  that 
each  writer  would  mention  all  that  he  knew.  Christians 
instructed  only  by  the  gospel  of  Mark*  or  Matthewf  would 
connect  with  the  Calvary  of  their  imagination  no  other  utter- 
ance than  the  first  verse  of  the  twenty-second  Psalm,  "  My 
God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me?"  except  indeed 
the  inarticulate  cry  at  the  moment  of  death.  Nothing  can 
be  idler  than  to  bring  the  commentator's  pedantry  to  such  an 
exclamation  and  cross-question  it  about  its  exact  meaning, 
flashed  forth  as  it  is  from  the  focus  of  concentrated  physical 
agony  that  burns  up  for  the  moment  all  the  ideal  dews  that 
would  cool  or  quench  it.  In  the  next  moment  the  very 
Psalmist  who  supplies  the  words  changes  his  voice  and  says, 
"  He  hath  not  despised  nor  abhorred  the  affliction  of  the 
afflicted,  ncitJier  hath  lie  hid  his  face  from  him:"  I  and  it  must 
ever  be  that  the  soul  of  the  sufferer,  swept  away  on  the  wave 
of  its  anguish,  should  sink  into  the  hollow  with  a  plaintive 

•  XV.  3i.  t  xxvii.  4G.  t  Ps-  xxii.  24. 


T    T    2 


64 i  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [BookV. 

cry,  yet  on  rising  to  the  crest  return  to  its  trust.  If  however 
the  complaint  of  being  "  forsaken  "  be  construed  as  serious, 
then  it  must  evidently  proceed  from  one  who  is  taken  by 
surprise  and  feels  himself  injured  or  betrayed  by  him  on 
whom  he  calls.  With  Jesus  this  is  conceivable,  if  he  deemed 
himself  the  commissioned  herald  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
appointed  to  "  prepare  the  way  of  the  Lord,  and  make  his 
paths  straight : "  for  how  could  the  bearer  of  such  glad  tidings 
have  laid  his  accounts  for  so  tragic  an  end  '?  Might  he  not 
have  reasonably  expected  protection  against  it  ?  But  if  he 
had  been  conscious  of  fulfilling  throughout  Messiah's  part, 
and  knowing  all  along  that  the  cross  was  its  very  essence  and 
crown,  had  voluntarily  accepted  it,  and  frequently  told  his 
disciples  what  he  would  have  to  suffer  and  how  the  sorrow 
would  be  turned  to  joy,  then  it  is  utterly  beyond  belief  that 
he  should  treat  the  exact  fulfilment  of  his  own  intent  as  a 
wrongful  "  forsaking  "  of  him. 

The  remainder  of  the  "  seven  words  "  have  not  come  down 
to  us  in  the  oldest  tradition.  For  the  next  three  we  have  to 
wait  till  the  end  of  the  first  century,  being  furnished  to  us  by 
the  gospel  of  Luke.     They  are, — 

The  prayer  for  the  authors  of  his  crucifixion, — "  Father, 
forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do."* 

The  promise  to  the  penitent  thief, — ' '  To-day  shalt  thou  be 
with  me  in  Paradise." t 

The  final  surrender, — "  Father,  into  thy  hands  I  commend 
my  spirit."! 

In  the  absence  of  any  external  means  of  historical  verifica- 
tion, the  acceptance  of  these  must  depend  on  considerations 
of  internal  probability.  That  we  miss  them  in  the  common 
tradition,  and  first  alight  upon  them  further  on,  is  not  conclu- 
sive against  them,  though  leaving  more  room  for  their  un- 
authentic introduction ;  for  fragments  of  true  memory  may 
jiart  company  and  move  down  on  different  lines,  to  be  re- 
united afterwards.  Internal  marks  however  are  not  wanting, 
which  afford  some  grounds  for  discrimination.  The  colloquy, 
for  instance,  of  the  malefactors  with  each  other  and  with 
Jesus  is  so  completely  out  of  time  and  character  as  to  be 

*  xxiii.  3i.  f  xxiii.  43.  t  xxiii.  4.Q. 


Chap.  II.]      THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      645 

evidently  fictitious.  That  a  couple  of  convicts,  under  the 
horrors  of  their  death-struggle,  should  get  into  an  alterca- 
tion about  the  Messianic  character  of  their  fellow- sufferer, 
one  of  them  taunting  him  as  an  impostor,  the  other  entreat- 
ing him  as  a  Saviour,*  can  be  accepted  only  in  defiance  of 
all  physical  and  moral  probability.  The  expectation  of  the 
penitent  petitioner  that,  in  spite  of  his  death  on  the  cross, 
Jesus  would  "come  in  his  kingdom,"  was  one  of  which  as 
yet  his  most  devoted  disciples  had  no  faintest  foregleam. 
Jesus,  who  had  habitually  disallowed  the  claim  of  Messiah- 
ship  on  his  behalf,  now  accepts  it,  and  makes  a  promise  in 
virtue  of  it.  And  the  promise  was  illusory ;  for  it  w^as  an 
appointment  to  meet  the  suppliant  within  a  few  hours  in  an 
imaginary  place,  viz.,  that  division  of  Hades  (called  Paradise) 
which,  according  to  the  current  Jewish  belief,  was  set  apart 
as  the  waiting-room  for  the  righteous  souls  reserved  for  the 
resurrection.  The  conception  evidently  belongs  to  the  age, 
not  of  the  scene  of  Calvary,  but  of  the  composition  of  the 
third  gospel, — the  age  which  gave  rise  to  the  belief  in  Christ's 
descensus  ad  inferos,  "  to  preach  to  the  spirits  in  prison."! 
For  the  scenery  of  the  underworld  connected  with  this  con- 
ception Luke  shows  a  predilection,  not  here  alone,  but  also 
in  the  parable  of  Lazarus  and  Dives.  Li  the  absence  of  any 
trace  of  such  a  conception  in  the  older  tradition,  there  is  no 
excuse  for  attributing  it  to  Jesus. 

No  such  difliculty  attaches  to  the  other  two  "  last  words" 
special  to  Luke.  In  the  prayer  for  those  who  are  responsible 
for  the  crucifixion,  one  question  only  brings  with  it  a  faint 
shadow  of  doubt :  What  is  involved  in  the  plea  on  their 
behalf,  "They  know  not  what  they  do"?  If  it  means  no 
more  than  might  be'  urged  for  leniency  towards  any  homi- 
cide (e.g.,  that  it  is  done  in  blind  passion,  or  under  vehement 
temptation,  and  is  no  true  expression  of  the  perpetrators' 
permanent  character),  then  it  is  simply  in  accordance  with 
the  self-abnegation  and  clemency  of  Jesus.  But  if  it  means, 
'  forgive  them,  for  theirs  is  a  sin  of  ignorance ;  they  do  not 
know  irJio  their  victim  reallij  is,  and  that  they  are  actually 

*  Accordiug  to  ]\Iark  and  Matthew,  bulli,  the  malefactors  reproached  hun  : 
Mark  xv.  32  ;  IMatt.  xxvii.  44.  t  1  Tot.  iii.  19. 


646  THE  DIVINE  IN   THE  HUMAN.  [Book  v. 

murdering  tlieir  oicn  Messiah;'  then  we  must  say  that  this 
is  the  afterthought  of  the  narrator's  age,  and  no  suggestion 
of  the  sufferer  himself ;  for  in  no  such  character  did  he  meet 
his  death.  I  own  my  prevaihng  fear  that  the  latter  is  what 
the  evangelist  intends.  Yet,  if  so,  it  is  still  possible  that  by 
the  mere  colouring  of  a  phrase  he  may  have  unconsciously  given 
to  a  real  incident  an  aspect  which  in  its  occurrence  it  did  not 
present.  That  Luke  makes  the  first  martyr  die  with  a  like 
intercession  for  his  persecutors  upon  his  lips  may  be  adduced 
as  an  author's  repetition  of  what  is  congenial  to  his  own 
feeling,  but  may  also  be  set  down  to  the  natural  appropria- 
tion by  Stephen  of  the  very  spirit  of  his  venerated  Lord. 

The  final  "  word,"  "  Father,  into  thy  hands  I  commend  my 
spirit,"  is  certainly  what  Jesus  would  most  characteristically 
say,  so  long  as  formed  thought  and  articulate  speech  were 
possible  to  him  at  all ;  and  the  doubt  whether  this  could  be 
so  to  the  verge  of  the  expiring  moment  is  chiefly  due  to  the 
insertion  there  by  the  other  synoptists  of  a  mere  inarticulate 
cry,  the  desire  to  interpret  which  would  naturally  lead  to 
such  substituted  expansion  into  definite  utterances  as  are 
found  in  Luke  and  John.  The  evolution  of  a  more  explicit 
account  from  a  meagre  one  is  too  familiar  to  be  pronounced 
impossible  :  but  whether  too  little  was  told  at  first,  or  too 
much  at  last,  cannot  be  determined  with  certainty. 

The  remaining  three  of  the  "  seven  last  words  "  are  found 
only  in  the  fourth  gospel.  The  first  alone  says  anything 
material  to  the  interest  of  the  narrative,  elicited  as  it  is 
by  the  sight  of  Mary  the  mother  of  Jesus  and  the  beloved 
disciple  standing  together  beneath  the  cross,  and  consisting 
of  the  words  commending  them  to  each  other,  "behold  thy 
Son  !  "  "  behold  thy  Mother  !  "*  Unless  this  touching  recital 
is  to  be  exempted  from  question  simply  on  the  ground  of  its 
beauty,  there  will  be  no  slight  difficulty  in  securing  its  his- 
torical place.  The  presence  beneath  the  cross  of  either  Mary 
or  the  beloved  disciple  is  inconsistent  with  the  synoptic  tra- 
dition, the  beloved  disciple  being  among  those  who  betook 
themselves  to  their  homeward  flight  from  Gethsemane,  and 
Mary  not  having  come  up  from  G  alilee  with  the  disciples  at 

*  xix.  2G,  27. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSOXALLY  REALIZED.      647 

all,  or  being  dra\Yn  into  his  train  by  any  sympatliy  with  his 
mission.  In  the  original  tradition  her  name  never  appears 
with  those  of  the  Galilean  women,  Mary  Magdalene,  Mary 
the  mother  of  James,  and  Salome,  who  believed  in  him,  or  is 
referred  to  except  in  connection  with  acts  of  resistance  to  his 
course  of  life.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that,  in  his  mind  also, 
the  greatness  of  the  spiritual  call  had  gone  far  to  dwarf  the 
domestic  claim,  and  replace  the  ties  of  the  native  home  which 
disowned  him  by  those  of  the  second  birth  which  bound  him 
in  faith  as  well  as  love  to  many  a  new  brother  and  sister  and 
mother.  That  the  evangelist  should  introduce  a  relation 
having  no  foundation  in  fact  will  surprise  no  one  who  con- 
siders the  real  character  and  purpose  of  his  work.  The  fourth 
gospel  is  no  history  of  the  actual  ministry  of  Jesus  ;  but  an 
account  of  what  it  ought  to  have  been,  or  would  have  to  be, 
in  order  to  exhibit  its  inner  meaning  as  understood  by  the 
author,  and  fully  embody  the  enlarged  theology  of  his  time. 
He  belonged  to  a  school  which  had  no  scruple  in  conforming 
history  to  doctrine,  instead  of  controlling  doctrine  by  history. 
The  incident  at  the  crucifixion  he  conceived  in  subservience 
to  a  design  pervading  his  gospel,  namely,  to  write  up  "  the 
beloved  disciple  "  into  a  position  of  primacy  preferable  to 
that  of  Peter,  and  under  cover  of  his  more  intimate  relation 
to  Jesus  to  give  authority  to  a  more  spiritual  theology  than 
found  acceptance  in  the  Jewish  Christian  branch  of  the 
Church.  The  passage  ranks  therefore  with  that  in  which 
Peter  learns  the  name  of  the  betrayer  through  the  favourite 
disciple,  who  was  lying  on  Jesus'  bosom  ;*  with  that  in  which 
he  gets  admission  into  the  High  Priest's  house  through  the 
intervention  of  the  same  "  other  disciple  ";  f  with  that  in 
which,  on  hearing  from  Mary  Magdalene  that  the  body  of 
Jesus  had  been  removed  from  its  place  of  interment,  "the 
disciple  whom  Jesus  loved  "  "outran  Peter"  in  the  race  to 
the  tomb,  and  though  not  the  first  to  '  enter  and  see  the 
linen  clothes  lying,'  was  the  first  '  to  see  and  believe.' t 
Nor  is  it  without  design  that  the  efiect  of  this  disciple's  pre- 
sence to  the  last  beneath  the  cross  is  heightened  by  contrast 
with  Peter's  denial  and  desertion,  without  any  mention  of  the 

♦  xiii.  2i,  25.  \  xviii.  15,  IG.  %  ^-  2-8. 


648  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

bitter  tears  and  repentance  which  the  synoptists  do  not  forget.* 
It  may  be  admitted  therefore  that  the  evangelist,  in  his  picture 
of  this  anonymous  disciple,  betrayed  the  animus  of  an  ecclesi- 
astical partisan.  But  when  it  is  suggested  that  the  figures 
which  he  introduces  and  moves  upon  the  scene  are  allegorical, 
that  the  mother  of  Christ  means  the  true  Israel,  or  the  Church, 
that  the  "  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved  "  means  his  spiritual 
brother  in  affinity  with  his  heavenly  Sonship,  as  distinguished 
from  his  natural  brother  James,  the  head  of  the  Jewish 
Christian  community  at  Jerusalem,  and  that  the  sending  her 
to  him  for  "her  future  home  claims  for  the  new  gospel  of  the 
Word  and  the  Spirit  the  final  rest  of  the  Church,  the  search 
for  hidden  meanings  seems  pushed  too  far,  and  diverts 
attention  from  the  drift  of  the  original  to  the  ingenuity  of  the 

interpreter,  t 

The  two  remaining  last  words,  the  exclamation  "I  thirst, "t 
and  "It  is  finished  "§  stand  in  a  connection  which  becomes 
clear  in  answer  to  the  question  '  What  is  finished  '  (or  fulfilled)  ? 
The  preamble  of  the  passage  gives  the  answer  :  "  after  this, 
Jesus,  knowing  that  all  the  conditions  requisite  for  the 
fulfilment  of  the  Scriptures  were  completed,  says  I  thirst." 
He  had  in  his  mind  all  the  steps  that,  according  to  prophecy, 
were  to  lead  up  to  the  last  moment,  and  was  conscious  that 
not  one  of  them  was  now  wanting.  Till  he  was  at  the 
terminus  of  his  suffering  he  had  refused  all  alleviation :  he 
had  borne  his  own  cross  :i|  he  had  refused  the  stupefying 
draught  ■.'^  all  that  scripture  said  of  him  had  come  to  pass: 
the  last  strain  was  taken  from  his  will :  he  might  cool  the 
fever  of  his  tongue  ere  it  said  '  It  is  over.' 

If  this  came  to  us  from  contemporary  sources,  and  accom- 
panied by  evidence  that  Jesus  lived  and  died  under  conviction 
of  his  Messiahship,  it  might  easily  pass  for  history.  But 
under  the  failure  of  these  conditions,  the  certainty  that  the 
fitting  of  reputed  prophecies  to  the  life  of  Jesus  was  an  apostolic 

*  xviii.  17,  18,  25-27. 

t  For  an  example  of  this  misleading  process,  see  Scholten  :  das  Evan- 
gelium  nach  Johannes,  German  translation  by  H.  Lang.  Berlin  :  1867.  pp. 
1G4-167,  381-385. 

X  xix.  28.  §  xix.  30. 

II  i.e.,  according  to  John  xix.  17.  i"  ]Mark  xv.  23 ;  Matt,  xxvii.  3i. 


Chap.  II.]     THE  RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      649 

and  post-apostolic  practice,  and  the  obvious  tendency  of  the 
evangeHst  to  carry  this  practice  to  a  most  artificial  extreme, 
the  critic  can  only  treat  these  unattested  expressions,  not  as 
the  transcript  of  fact,  but  as  the  product  of  theory. 

Though  certainty  with  regard  to  the  details  of  the  crucifixion 
hours  is  irrecoverably  lost,  all  the  traditions,  whether  historical 
or  fictitious,  represent  what  in  the  belief  of  the  nearest  heirs 
of  his  spirit  he  would  be  sure  to  do  and  say,  till  will  and  voice 
fainted  into  silence.  And  they  leave  an  impression  in  such 
complete  accordance  with  his  characteristic  affections,  as  to 
relieve  the  deepest  tragedy  in  the  world  with  the  sacred  joy  of 
its  highest  veneration. 

With  the  expiring  breath  of  the  Eevealer  ends  the  historic 
episode  of  his  revelation.  That  revelation,  concentrated  as  it 
was  in  his  person,  in  the  drama  of  his  life  and  the  movements 
of  his  spirit,  had  delivered  all  its  immediate  light,  when  the 
earthly  term  was  closed.  The  image  was  complete :  the 
pathetic  experiences  were  all  told  off :  no  new  traits  were  in 
reserve  :  and  whatever  power  his  presence  had  to  "  show  us 
the  Father,"  or  disclose  to  us  "  what  spirit  we  are  of,"  was 
delivered  forth  and  belonged  now  to  a  future  store.  Not 
indeed  that  he  himself  was  at  an  end  :  he  was  truly  affirmed 
to  be  "  alive  for  evermore  "  :  and  the  absolute  conviction  of 
this  on  the  part  of  his  followers  is  among  the  most  certain  of 
historical  facts.  But  it  belongs  to  their  history,  and  not  to 
Ms,  which  has  its  continuance  in  quite  another  sj)here.  That 
"the  dead  live,"  when  they  are  such  as  he,  was  with  them, 
as  it  will  ever  be,  an  irresistible  faith  :  but  the  attempt  to 
shift  its  spiritual  warrant  to  the  ground  of  Sense,  and  make  it 
good  by  witnesses  of  palpable  and  visible  fact,  is  an  illusion 
like  many  another  false  excuse  for  a  true  insight.  How  this 
attempt  wrought  itself  out  into  the  forms  which  it  assumes 
in  the  New  Testament  writings  has  been  shown  in  the 
chapter  on  the  resurrection  :  I  revert  to  it  now  only  to  clear 
the  position  that,  though  to  the  Crucified  himself  the  cruci- 
fixion was  Init  rebirth  into  higher  life,  yet  to  us  it  is  his 
withdrawal  into  the  invisible,  and  the  necessary  close  of  his 
historic  revelation. 

As  I  look  back  on  the  foregoing  discussions,  a  conclusion  is 


650  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE  HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

forced  upon  me  on  which  I  cannot  dwell  without  pain  and 
dismay  :  viz.,  that  Christianity,  as  defined  or  understood  in 
all  the  Churches  which  formulate  it,  has  been  mainly  evolved 
from  what  is  transient  and  perishable  in  its  sources :  from 
what  is  unhistorical  in  its  traditions,  mythological  in  its 
preconceptions,  and  misapprehended  in  the  oracles  of  its 
prophets.  From  the  fable  of  Eden  to  the  imagination  of  the 
last  trumpet,  the  whole  story  of  the  Divine  order  of  the  world 
is  dislocated  and  deformed.  The  blight  of  birth-sin  with  its 
involuntary  perdition ;  the  scheme  of  expiatory  redemption 
with  its  vicarious  salvation  ;  the  incarnation,  with  its  low 
postulates  of  the  relation  between  God  and  man,  and  its 
unworkable  doctrine  of  two  natures  in  one  person ;  the  official 
transmission  of  grace  through  material  elements  in  the  keep- 
ing of  a  consecrated  corporation  ;  the  second  coming  of  Christ 
to  summon  the  dead  and  part  the  sheep  from  the  goats  at  the 
general  judgment; — all  are  the  growth  of  a  mythical  literature, 
or  Messianic  dreams,  or  Pharisaic  theology,  or  sacramental 
superstition,  or  popular  apotheosis.  And  so  nearly  do  these 
vain  imaginations  preoccupy  the  creeds  that  not  a  moral  or 
spiritual  element  finds  entrance  there  except  "  the  forgiveness 
of  sins."  To  consecrate  and  diffuse,  under  the  name  of 
"Christianity,"  a  theory  of  the  world's  economy  thus  made 
up  of  illusions  from  obsolete  stages  of  civilization,  immense 
resources,  material  and  moral,  are  expended,  with  effect  no 
less  deplorable  in  the  province  of  religion  than  would  be,  in 
that  of  science,  hierarchies  and  missions  for  propagating  the 
Ptolemaic  astronomy,  and  inculcating  the  rules  of  necromancy 
and  exorcism.  The  spreading  alienation  of  the  intellectual 
classes  of  European  society  from  Christendom,  and  the 
detention  of  the  rest  in  their  spiritual  culture  at  a  level 
not  much  above  that  of  the  Salvation  army,  are  social 
phenomena  which  ought  to  bring  home  a  very  solemn 
appeal  to  the  conscience  of  stationary  Churches.  For  their 
long  arrear  of  debt  to  the  intelligence  of  mankind  they 
adroitly  seek  to  make  amends  by  elaborate  beauty  of 
ritual  art.  The  apology  soothes  for  a  time  :  but  it  will  not 
last  for  ever. 

But  in  turnmg  to  the  historical  residue  from  these  inquiries^ 


Chap.  II.]      THE   RELIGION  PERSONALLY  REALIZED.      651 

I  am  brought  to  a  further  conckision  in  which  I  rest  with 
peace  and  hope  :  viz.,   that   Christianity,  understood  as  the 
personal   rehgion  of    Jesus   Christ,    stands  clear  of   all  the 
perishable  elements,  and  realizes  the  true  relation  between 
man  and  God.     I   do   not  mean  by  this  that  he  was  exempt 
from  an   Israelite's    interpretation  of  his  national  literature 
and  history  ;  that,  for  example,  he  could  read  the  Hexateuch 
and  the  Prophets  with  the  eyes  of  a  Kuenen,  that  he  knew  the 
date  of  Daniel,  or   was   secured  against  misapplying  phrases 
of    Malachi.     Subjection     to    the    conditions  of    imperfect 
knowledge,  far  from  being  a  disqualification,  is  an  essential, 
for  the  true  guide  of  men  in  things  divine.     For  Omniscience, 
looking  through  infinitude  along  all  radii,  is  beyond  the  rela- 
tive perspective  which  all  our  spiritual  experience   involves. 
Keligion  is  the  right  attitude  of  the  finite  soul  to  the  Infinite, 
the  straining  of  the   vision  from  within   the  shadows  to  the 
far-ofi'  Light,   the   devotion   of  goodness  still  immature  and 
precarious  towards  the  Perfect  and  Eternal :  and  no  Media- 
tor can  help  us  here    but  one   "  who,  being  touched  with  the 
feeling  of  our  infirmities,   is   tempted  in  all  points  as  we  are, 
and  yet  without   sin."     Even  this  condition,  "  without  sin," 
is  not  to  be  pressed  out  of  its  relative  significance  for  every 
growing   mind  into   a   rigid    dogmatic  absolutism :    it  tells 
simply  the  impression  of  his  life  upon  its  witnesses,  without 
contradicting  the  self-judgment  which  felt  hurt  by  the  epithet 
"  Good.'''    Nay,  this  very  susceptibility  to  possible  repentance 
and  consciousness  of  something  short  of  "  Good,"  rather  lifts 
him  for  us  nearer  to  the  standard   of  holiness,    than  detains 
him  in  the   precincts   of  sin.     It   is  only   in  the  sphere  of 
mundane  phenomena  that  a  Eevealer  needs  to  knoiv  more  than 
we  :  in  the  sphere  of  Divine  things  the  requirement  is,  that 
lie  he  better,  and,  in  the  order  of  his  affections  and  the  secrets 
of  his  will,  make   more  approach  to  the  supreme  Perfection. 
This  intervening  position  it  is  which  alone  renders  the  function 
of    a    Mediator, — Uplifter, — Inspirer, — possible  :    and     tJtat, 
not  instead  of  immediate  revelation,  but  simply  as  making  us 
more  aware  of  it  and  helping  us  to  interpret  it.     For  in  the 
very  constitution  of  the  human  soul  there  is  provision  for  an 
immediate  apprehension  of  God.     But  often  in  the  transient 


652  THE  DIVINE  IN  THE   HUMAN.  [Book  V. 

lights  and  shades  of  conscience  we  pass  on  and  "know  not 
who  it  is"  :  and  not  till  we  see  in  another  the  victory  which 
shames  our  own  defeat,  and  are  caught  up  by  enthusiasm  for 
some  realized  heroism  or  sanctity,  do  the  authority  of  right 
and  the  beauty  of  holiness  come  home  to  us  as  an  appeal 
literally  Divine.  The  train  of  the  conspicuously  righteous  in 
their  several  degrees  are  for  us  the  real  angels  that  pass  to 
and  fro  on  the  ladder  that  reaches  from  earth  to  heaven.  And 
if  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  in  virtue  of  the  characteristics  of  his 
spirit,  holds  the  place  of  Prince  of  Saints,  and  perfects  the 
conditions  of  the  pure  religious  life,  he  thereby  reveals  the 
highest  possibilities  of  the  human  soul,  and  their  dependence 
on  habitual  communion  between  man  and  God. 


INDEX. 


Acts  of  the  Apostles,  analytical  com- 
pendium of,  258-269 

change   in    the   account  of  the 

ascension  distances  the  composi- 
tion from  the  Gospel,  250-253 

discrepant  from  the  Gospel  on 

the  ascension,  373 

equalizes  the  catliolicityof  Peter 

and  Paul,  200,  2G3 

marks  in  the,  by  anachronism 

of  late  date,  247,  248 

]\Iessianic   theory    of,    required 

considerable  time  to  form,  253- 
256 

probably  due  to  second  decade 

of  second  century,  257 

quotes   an   itinerary    for    com- 


panions of  Paul,  2GG,  268 
see    Scholteu,    too   Petriue  for 

Luke,  245 
and  third  Gospel,  have  the  same 

universalism,  245 
both   at   least   as  late  as 

Trajan,  246,  247 
Adam,  constitution  of,   according  to 

the  Apostle  Paul,  385,  386 
Alexandria,    philosophy    of,     trans- 
formed Jewish  monotheism,  403, 

404 
Alternative  possibilities,  involved  in 

moral  law,  40 
Anachronism,  in  reported  sayings  of 

Jesus,  582-592 
Ancyra,  canon  of,  condemns  sorcery, 

not  as  imaginary,  but  as  devilish, 

146 
Anselm,  transferred  Christ's  ransom 

from  tlic   Devil  to  God's  right- 
eousness, 136 
Authorpomorphism,  pvimitive,  2,  3 


Apelles  (]\Iarcion's  disciple)  used  the 
fourth  Gospel,  198 

Apocalypse,  the,  chronology  of,  im- 
plied in  the  letters  to  the 
Churches,  223,  224 

in  the  vision  of  the  seven- 
headed  beast,  218-221 

extreme  dates  of  parts  compos- 
ing, 227 

falls  out  of  all  relation  to  the 

fourth  Gospel,  227 

how  far  dated  by  special  phrases, 

222,  223 

resolved  by  Vischer  into  Jewish 

constituents    christianized,  2CG, 
227 

'  Apocalyptic  '  religion,  distinguished 
from  'Revealed,'  317-320 

unverifiable,  321,  322 

Apollinaris,  Bishop,  Monoj)hysitG 
doctrine  of,  139 

Apollos,  head  of  the  Baptists  at 
Ephesus,  578 

'  Apostles,'  '  Teaching  of  the  Twelve,' 
first  witness  (with  Justin  Mar- 
tyr) to  the  triple  baptismal  for- 
mula, 515 

gives  sample  of  Communion 

Service,  536-538 

'  Apostolicity,'  Catholic,  contradicted 
by  history,  165-168 

Aristotle,  deemed  the  cosmos  eternal, 
10 

Ascension,  the,  assigned  to  different 
dates,  from  one  day  to  eleven 
years  after  the  Resurrection,  373, 
note. 

Athanasius,  would  have  found  Justin 
IMartyr,  Irenaius,  TertuUian,  het- 
erodox, 134 


654 


INDEX. 


Atonement,  how  ascribed  to  the  death 

of  Christ,  478-481 
Augustine,    held   Christ's  ransom  to 

have   been  paid   to    the    Devil, 

135 
Authority,  divine,  claimed  by  Catholic 

Church  as  sole  organ  of  grace, 

129,  130 
Authority,   moral,  hedonist  explana- 
tion of,  57-63 
not  of  the  whole  over   a 

part,  66-68 

■ not  self-imposed,  63-66 

witnesses  a  real  righteous- 


ness, 68-72 
Authorship,  of  ancient  books,  condi- 
tions for  finding,  176 

Bacon,  Lord,  credited  with  Palmer's 
Christian  Paradoxes,  177,  178 

Bain,  polemic  of,  against  '  forces,' 
23,  24 

Baptism,  formula  of,  discrepant  de- 
cisions about,  137 

Triple,  first  found  in  the 

AiSax'^  and  Justin  Martyr,  515 

growth  of,  with  its  interpreta- 
tion traced  in  the  N.  T.,  516-518 

■ infant,    first    appearance   and 

effect  of,  519 

Tertullian's  protest  against, 

520,  521 

of  Jesus,  inner  meaning  of,  603- 

605 

scene  at,  differently  related 

by  the  several  synoptists,  530 

(unused  in  synoptists  by  Jesus), 

he  employs  in  fourth  Gospel  for 
enrolling  disciples,  515 

Baptist,  John  the,  had  Jesus  for  dis- 
ciple and  continuator,  578,  579 

■ — -    sect    of,    under    Apollos, 

found  by  Paul  at  Epliesus,  578- 
580 

witness  of,  to  Jesus  as  Mes- 


siah, vinauthentic,  579,  580 
Barnabas,  epistle  of,  how  related  to 
the  fourth  Gospel,  205-208 

to    what    date   referable, 

203-205 
Bcntham,  as  jurist,  combined  hedon- 
ism and  utility,  95,  96 


Bcntham  deduces  '  authority  '  from 
fear,  59,  60 

withholds  the  predicates  '  good  ' 

and  '  bad  '  from  inotives,  82,  83 

Book,  authorship  of  a,  how  deter- 
mined, 176 

Borgia,  Rodrigo  and  Caesar,  crimes 
of,  154 

Buckle,  historical  theory  of,  con- 
sidered, 110,  111 

Bulgarians,  baptism  of,  allowed  in 
Christ's  name  only,  137 

Caiaphas,  indictment  against  Jesus, 
prepared  at  house  of,  640,  641 

inatters  testified  and  not  testified 

before,  641 

■ whether  Jesus  claimed  Messiah- 
ship  before,  641,  642 

Catholic  '  Apostolicity,'  contradicted 
by  history,  165-168 

'  Sanctity,'  not  without  a  fearful 

set-off  of  guilt,  151-158 

real  but  not   exceptional, 

153-160 

'  Unity,'   value   and  reality  of, 

tested,  132-152 

'  Catholicity,'  ecclesiastical  meaning 

of,  161 

process  of  reaching,  163,  164 

Causality  in  Nature,  whence  the  idea 

of,  2,  3,  24-27 
Cassarea   Philippi,     disciples'    report 

near,  examined,  847-352 
Chalcedon,    capitula     of,     recognize 

Nestorians  as  orthodox,  140 
Christ,  for  Paul,  the  spiritual  Head 

of  humanity,  398,  399 
personal,    as    spiritual    Adam, 

prior  to  incarnation,  394,  395 

preexistence    of,    assumed    by 

Paul,  392-394 

'  thou  art  the,' — Peter's  confes- 
sion,— how  received,  349-851 

Christendom,  prevailing  ^^assion  of, 
in  contrast  with  Paganism,  457, 
458 

Christianity,  is  not,  this  or  that 
doctrine  about  Jesus  Christ, 
575 

is,  the  Religion  of  Jesus  Christ, 

575 


INDEX. 


655 


Christianity,  pure  and  simple,  never 

and  nowhere  found,  291-297 
Christology,  anthropologic  in   synop- 

tists  and  Paul,  thcologic  in  fourth 

gospel,  425 
growth  of,  through  three  stages 

within  the  N.  T.,  237-242 
■ historical  causes  of  change  in, 

426,  427 
• of  the  fourth  gospel,  impossible 

to  Zebedee's  son,  242 
Christophanies,    as    enumerated    by 

Paul,  3GG-3G9 

as  related  iu  '  Acts,'  373,  374 

as   reported   by  the   synoptists, 

369-373 

limited  to  disciples,  374 

Chronology,  of  the  world,  extension 

of,  11-13 

indifferent  to  theism,  13 

Church,  Catholic,  advantage  of,  over 

the     Protestant,     as      supposed 

Trustee  of  Salvation,  1G9-171 
claims,       as       distinctive 

'  notes,'    Unity,    Sanctity,    Uni- 
versality, Apostolicity,  130-132 
conflicts,  bitterness  of,  thrown 

back  into  words  of  Jesus,  597- 

599 
Clementine  Homilies,  whether  fourth 

gospel  cited  in,  200,  201 
Commandment,  the  question  '  What 

is  the   first   of    all  ?  '    answered, 

634 
Communion,  the.    See  Lord's  Supper 
Community  of  goods,  qualified  sense 

of,  in  Jerusalem  church,  535,  536 
Conscience,     how    replaced    by    its 

critics,  78,  79 
how  transformed  by  Christianity, 

75 
ideality  of,  source  of  the  sense 

of  Sin,  452,  453 

meaning  and  range  of,  76 

why  rejected  as  barren  test,  77 

Copernicus,  work  of,  condemnation  of 

repealed   in  1818  by  Pius  YII., 

150 
condemned    at    Home    by 

Paul  v.,  150 
Creation,   absolute,    not    implied    in 

theism,  10,  11 


Cross,  the,  as  an  expiation  of  human 

guilt,  478-481 
- — —  a  voluntary  self-sacrifice,  481 
how  ojierative  in  "  drawing  all 

men  unto  "  Christ,  501-503 
'  seven    words  '   from,   how   far 

authentic,  643-649 
Crucifixion,  the,  in  fourth  gospel,  an 

exaltation,    not    a    humiliation 

442,  443 
provides  for  continuity   of 

the  Spirit,  443,  444 
Cyril,    Bishop,    Monophysite    cham- 
pion, 140 

Death,  connection  of,  with  Sin,  386, 
387 

has   secondary   signification    of 

moral  blight,  475,  476 

involves,  to  the  redeemed,  wait- 
ing in  Hades  for  resurrection, 
475 

unredeenred,  disappearance 

in  Hades,  475 

not  the  "  complete  extinction  of 

the  individual,"  470,  473,  474 

not  the  portal  to  any  hell,  471, 

472 

origin  and  meaning  of,  accord- 
ing to  the  apostle  Paul,  385,  388, 
389 

Development,  Catholic  doctrine  of, 
does  not  help  Unity,  137-139 

Devil,  the.     See  Satan. 

Dionysian  books,  reckon  six  sacra- 
ments, 137 

DiscixDles,  the  personal,  entrusted  by 
Jesus  with  no  preaching  iu 
Judsea,  635 

Disinterestedness,  incredibly  enjoined 
for  reasons  of  self-interest,  600, 
601 

Easter  dispute,  appeal  in  the,  to  apos- 
tolic example,  235 

bearing     of     the,     on    the 

authorship  of  the  fourth  gospel, 
235 

historical  stages  of,  231 

how  contained  already  in 

the  difference  cf  tlio  gospels, 
232-234 


656 


INDEX. 


Easter  dispute,  opposite  pleas  in,  sec. 

Apollinaris  and  Hii^polytus,  231 
reckoning  and  usages,  difference 

of  between  E.  and  W.,  228-232 
Errors,    iiuman,    wrouglit    into    the 

divine  texture  of  liistory,  297-299 
Evolution,  shows  the   how,  not  the 

whence,  14-16 

Faith,  the  human  condition  of  justi- 
fication and  the  new  life,  483 

'  Father,  the,'  relatively  to  '  the  Son,' 
an  antithesis  of  late  date,  5S5, 
590 

Fear,  a  religious  power,  only  in  moral 
natures,  451-453,  458,  459 

Flesh,  not  "  the  whole  man,"  as  M. 
l\Ienegoz  interprets,  470-474 

Pauline  conception  of,  383-386 

Forces,  discharged  from  thought  by 
Mill  and  Bain,  22-24 

unity  of,  implied  in  their  corre- 
lation, 20-22,  27-29 

Forgiveness,  not  mentioned  in  the 
fourth  gospel,  439 

Galileo,  sentenced  by  the  Holy  Office, 
in  1633,  150 

sentence    on,   proved    valid    in 

form,  151 

Gauden's,  Bisliop,  Ei/coji/  ISacnXiKi], 
literary  history  of,  179 

Gentile  Christianity,  not  contem- 
plated during  the  ministry  of 
Jesus,  585-587 

Gethsemane,  the  scene  in,  inter- 
preted, 637-639 

God,  how  distinguished  from  the 
world,  29-35 

how  first  apprehended,  3,  4 

•  immanent  and  operative  in  the 

world,  18-27 

provides  for  a  second  factor  of 

history,  105-107 

under     what     conditions     Sole 

Cause,  103 

• vestiges  of,  for  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle, 15 

Gospel,  the  fourth,  comments  on, 
written  by  Heracleon,  190 

• ■  divides  men  as  children  of 

darkness  and  of  lisht,  436-439 


Gospel,  tlie   fourth,  first   cited  with 

name    by   Theophilus    (Antiocli) 

about  A.D. 175,  191 
first  referred  to  Jolm  the  apcstle 

by  Irenffius,  192 
from   internal  features,  not  by 

one  of  the  twelve,  211-217 
- —  meaning  in,  of  the  '  judgment ' 

of  life  and  death,  437,  438 

moves  among  the   conceptions 

cliaracterizing  the  middle  de- 
cades of  the  second  century,  236, 
237 

never  mentions  '  repentance  '  or 

'  forgiveness,'  439 
no  longer  in  any  relation  to  the 

Apocalypse,  227 
passed  into  circulation  between 

A.D.  140  and  170, 199 

proceeds  from  a  single  author,. 

189,  190 

purpose  of,  theological,  not  his- 
torical, 435,  436 

whether  cited  by  Justin  Martyr, 

201,  202 

whether   cited   by   Valentinus, 

196 

whether  cited  in  the  Epistle  of 

Barnabas,  203-208 
wliether  by  the  same  author  as 

1  John,  509-512 
whether  identifying  the  beloved. 

disciple  with  John,  210,  211 

whetlier    professing    to    be   by 

tlie  '  beloved  disciple,'  203,. 
210 

Gospels,  existence  of  the,  attested  in 
two  stages,  181-183 

first  and  third,  accounts  of  Na- 
tivity in,  unaccredited  and  irre- 
concilable, 189 

limits  of  external  evidence  re- 
specting, 183,  184 

phenomena  of  synoptical,  in  re- 
spect of  agreement  in  matter, 
184 

synoptical,   indications   in,    of 

successive  recensions,  187,  188 

relate  one-thirteenth  of  tlie 

ministry  of  Jesus,  135 
• •  verbal  phenomena  of  agree- 


ment and  dillercacc  in,  136 


INDEX. 


657 


Gregory  Nazianzen,  attests  discrepant 
beliefs  about  the  Holy  Ghost,  134 

of  Nyssa,  held  Christ's  ransom 

to  have  been  paid  to  the  Devil, 
135 

IX.,  Pope,  edict  of,  for  punish- 
ing sorcery,  147, 148 

Grosart's,  Rev.  Dr.  A.  B.,  literary 
history  of  the  '  Christian  Para- 
doxes,' 178 

Hades,  function  of,  in  Jewish  belief, 

492 
■ unknown  to  the  fourth  gospel, 

492,  493 
Happiness,   principle    of    '  greatest, 

not  deducible  from  the  hedonist 

postulate,  93-95 
Harnack,  Adolf,  on  Philo's  ecstasij,  in 

relation  to  Plato's  idealism,  316 
■ reports   Vischer's   solution 

of  the  Apocalypse  problem,  225, 

226 
sees  in  Jesus  Messianic  pre- 
tensions, growing  from  first    to 

last,  346,  347 
Heracleon,  wrote  comments  on   the 

fourth  gospel,  196 
Heraclius,  Emperor,  starts  the  mo- 

nothelite  doctrine,  141,  142 
High-priest.     See  Caiaphas. 
History,  Divine  and  human  factors 

of,  105-109 
• examples    of    Divine    part    in, 

116-125 
test  for  distinguishing  the  factors 

of,  111-113 
Honorius,    Pope,    anathematized    as 

monothelite  by  sixth  Council  at 

Constantinople,  143 

Incarnation,  the,  of  no  avail  in  evi- 
dence of  Personality  in  God, 
446-448 

Incongruities,  moral,  incredible  in 
the  tradition  of  Jesus,  597-600 

Innocent  VIII.,  Pope,  edict  of,  for 
punisliing  sorcery,  148 

Inspiration,  distinguished  from  laws 
of  thought,  114-116 

elciuont  of,  in  the  Hellenic  race, 

116-118 


Inspiration,  element  of,  in  the  Hebrew 
race,  119-121 

in  the  Teutonic  race,  122- 

124 

mingles    with    all   the  risks   of 

human  thought,  128,  129 

Intuition,  how  far  distinguished  from 
revelation,  306,  307 

Irenseus,  held  Christ's  ransom  to  have 
been  paid  to  the  Devil,  135 

subordinated   the    Son    to    the 

Father,  134 

•  witness  of,  to  the  gospels,  char- 
acterized, 182 

fourth  gospel,  how  far  his- 
torical, 192,  193 

Jerusalem,  entry  into,  of  the  Galilean 
caravan,  625-629 

journey  to,  mood  of  Jesus  dur- 
ing, 623,  624 

the  lament  over,  quoted  from  a 

Jewish  apocalypse,  342,  343 

Jesus,  affections  of,  broad  and  deep 
through  life  in  God,  610-612 

as    interpreter    of    forgiveness, 

Divine  and  human,  613,  614 

as  subject  and  spectator  of  the 

baptismal  scene  at  the  Jordan, 
603-605 

asks   more   than   '  keeping    the 

commandments,'  617-619 

assumes  the  mission  of  the  im- 
prisoned Baptist,  without  the 
rite,  606,  607 

at  Simon  the  Pharisee's  table, 

619,  620 

austere  indignation  of,  towards 

hollow  self-righteousness,  609 

catholicity  of,  620,  621 

• changes  the  method  and  spirit 

of  the  mission,  007,  60S 

free  handling  by,  of  the  Mosaic 

Law,  621-623 

guards  character  at  tlie  fountain- 
head  616 

in  the  temple,  how  likely  to  be 

affected,  629-632 

interest  in.  Synoptic,    Pauline, 

Johannine,  contrasted,  422-426 

lenient  compassion  of,  towards 

outcast  sin,  608,  009 

U   U 


6s8 


INDEX. 


Jesus,  not  the  object,  but  the  author 
and  model  of  Christian  faith, 
358,  359 

person  cf,  three  theories  re- 
specting, in  the  N.  T.,  361 

power  of,  through  sympathetic 

insight,  612,  613 

removes  to  Jerusalem,  623-629 

renders   humility  eternal,   616, 

617 

repudiates  Messiahship,  distin- 
guishing himself  from  the  Sou 
of  Man,  581 

seen  only  through  the  eyes   of 

theorizers  about  him,  576 

temptation  of,  interpreted,  605, 

606 

— -  the  disciple  and  continuator  of 

John  the  Baptist,  578,  579 
— —  the  personality  of,  the  unity  of 

Christendom,  576 
John,   Apostle,   first   Epistle   of   (so- 
called),   whether   by   author    of 

the  fourth  gospel,  509-512 

not  at  the  crucifixion,  646 

Patmos  tradition  of,  con- 
tradicted by  time-marks  in  the 

Apocalypse,  218-224 
settlement  of,  at  Ephesus, 

a  fiction  easily   explained,  194, 

195 
traditional  exile  of,  under 

Domitian     and     return     under 

Nerva,  218 
of  Damascus,  reckons  only  two 

sacraments,  137 
the  Baptist's  witness  to  Jesus  as 

Messiah,  unauthentic,  578-580 
Judaism,  colonial,  development  of,  as 

Palestine  declined,  399-401 
in  Alexandria,  wedded  Hellenic 

to  Semitic  thought,  401-403 
Judas,  probable  motive  and  mode  of 

betrayal  by,  636,  637 
Judgment,  how  committed   to    '  the 

Son  '  in  the  fourth  gospel,  497- 

500 
Justification,  the  positive  sequel  to 

acquittal,  481,  482 
Justin  Martyr,  first  witness  (with  the 

AiSa;()7)  to  the  triple  baptismal 

formula,  515 


Justin  Martyr  subordinated  the  Son 

to  the  Father,  134 
testimony  of,  to  the  gospel 

history  characterized,  181,  183 

Kingdom  of  God,  delay  of,  left  the 
dead  too  long  in  Hades,  568-570 

how  turned  to  account 

by  Origen,  508.  570 

■ idea  of,  apocalyptic  exten- 


sion of,  552-555 
traced  in  its  historic  growth, 

547-552 
millcnnarian  pictures  of,  in  the 

first  and  second  centuries,  566, 

567 
pales  before  the    growing  faith 

in   individual  immortality,  563- 

565 
spiritualization  of,  in  the  fourth 

gospel,  562 
stages  in  the  Pauline  expecta- 
tions about,  555-561 
Knowledge,  supremacy   of   (Plato's), 

how  related  to  Philo's  '  ecstasy,' 

316 

'  Lamb,'  not  applied  to  Jesus  by  sj'u- 
optists,  or  in  the  apostolic  age, 
505 

origin  and  meaning  of  the  meta- 
phor considered,  504-507 

Law,  definition  of,  37 

for  what  end  instituted,  accord- 
ing to  Paul,  390,  391 

gradations  of,  38-40 

■ •  moral,  involves  alternatives,  40 

Life,  future,  finally  conceived  as  in- 
dividual immortality,  570,  571 

Greek  and  Hebrew  ideals  of  per- 
fect, compared,  121,  122 

new,  in  Christ  risen,  482,  483 

primitively  ascribed  to  the  outer 

world,  1-3 

Logos  (ap.  Philo),  apprehensible,  as 
the  Absolute  God  is  not,  420,  421 

as  instrumental  cause,  distin- 
guished from  source  and  motive^ 
411,  412 

•  as  '  Second  God,'  saves  the  Holi- 
ness of  the  Father  by  creating 
for  him,  416 


INDEX 


659^ 


Logos,  called  (like  the  cosmos  in  idea) 
the  only  Son  of  God,  409 

homogeneous,  in  God,  in  Na- 
ture, and  in  Man,  412,  413 

mediates  hetween  the  Immortal 

and  the  Mortal  natures,  418, 
419 

'  neither  created,  nor  uncrcato,' 

420 

not  yet  personal,  421 

the    Incarnate,   by    construing 

Messianic  apocalypse  into  im- 
manent truth,  indicates  the 
post-apostolic  age  of  the  fourth 
gospel,  445,  446 

could  have  got  no  hearing 

in  the  Galilean  villages,  448 

finds    the   world  I'uled   by 

the  Prince  of  darkness,  434,  435 

is  himself  the  Revelation,  as 

well  as  the  Revealer,  439-441 

• function  of,  how  operative 

on  men,  49G-498 

• the   subject   of  the  fourth 


gospel,  428-431 

Lord's  Supper,  the,  degeneration  of, 
into  a  Sacrament,  540-544 

elements  of,  ecclesiastical  super- 
stitions about,  544,  545 

• extension    of,    into    a    Church 

usage,  533-535 

■ implied  theory  of,  in  the  fourth 

gospel,  542,  543 

model     of,    preserved     in     the 

AiSnxn,  536-538 

not     an     instituted     rite,     but 

an  embodied  afterthought,  529- 
531 

• origin  of,  in  the  personal  circle 

of  disciples,  532-534 

Paul's  and  the  Synoptists'  ac- 
counts of,  compared,  522-528 

prefigured  the  subsequent  rela- 
tion of  the  Agape  and  the  Eu- 
charist, 523 

why  called  the  '  Eucharist,'  and 

deemed  a  '  Sacrifice,'  539,  540 

Marcion,  not  chargeable  witli  rejec- 
tion of  the  fourth  gospel,  oi- 
shown  to  have  knowledge  of  it, 
198 


Martha  and  Mary  of  Bethany,  Jesus 
mediates  between,  618 

I\Iary,  inother  of  Jesus,  not  at  the 
crucifixion,  646,  647 

Menegoz,  SI.  Eugene,  interpretation 
by,  of  Paul's  cri'tp^,  discussed, 
470-474 

Messiah,  doctrine  of  a  suffering,  how 
and  when  formed,  361-363 

■  limited  use  of  the  phrase  '  Son 

of  God  '  as  synonym  for,  333,  334 

'  Son    of    David,'   the    popular 

synonym  for,  335 

■  '  Son  of  IMan  '  as  synonym  for, 

whence   and   how  derived,   336, 
337 

Jesus  does  not  identify  himself 

with  the,  354,  355 

whether  Jesus   claimed   to  be, 

critically  questionable,  331,  332 

Messianic  language,  effect  of  aban- 
doning, 335-357 

mythology,  mixed  influence  of, 

on  the  gospel  narratives,  329-331 

■ prechristian  literature    of 

327,  328 

Messiahship,  a  postponed,  not  con- 
templated during  the  ministry 
of  Jesus,  587-589 

jMill,  James,  and  J.  S.,  allow  motives 
to  be  good  or  bad,  83,  84 

■  J.  S.  distinguishes  quantity  and 

quality  in  pleasures,  87-89 

Millennium,  Alexandrine  and  Gnostic 
disaffection  towards,  566 

first  and  second  century  belief 

in,  566,  567 

IMilton,  John,  questioned  the  autho- 
rity of  the  EiVwv  ^aaiXiKi],  179 

Miracle  of  the  bhghted  lig-tree,  gene- 
sis of,  594,  595 

reported,  conditions  of  credibil- 
ity for,  592-594 

sources  of  mistaken  belief 

in,  593.  596 

Monism,  alleged,  of  Paul,  in  his  use 
of  o"a/j|,  considered,  470-474 

Monophysite  doctrine  prevails  in 
Egypt  and  Palestine,  139 

Monothclitc  doctrine  approved  by  Em- 
peror Hcraclius  and  Pope  Hono- 
rius,  141,  142 


66o 


INDEX. 


Monothelite  doctrine  condemned  by 
Pope  John  IV.  and  first  Lateran 
Council,  142 

Moral  intuitions,  whether  evolved  by 
inheritance,  99,  100 

judgment,  begins  with  self- 
judgment,  44-48 

discrepancies  of,  explained, 

49-52 

growth  and  decline  of,  ex- 
plained, 53-55 

objects  of,  defined,  41-44 

why  and  how  far  intuitive, 

56 

sentiments,  theories  of,  40 

Morley,  Mr.  J.,  allows  motives  to  be 
good  and  bad,  84 

Moses,  how  disposed  of  in  death, 
according  to  the  "  Assumption  " 
of,  364 

Motives,  reduced  to  desire  of  pleasure 
by  hedonists,  77-79 

whether  thoy  can  differ,  as  good 

and  bad,  81-86 

Nativity,  accounts  of  the,  in  Matthew 
and  Luke,  unaccredited  and  irre- 
concilable, 189 
Natural '  Religion,  how  antithetic 
to  'Revealed,'  302 
supposed  relation  to  Re- 
vealed, fallacy  of,  312,  313 

two   meanings   comprised 


under,  303,  304 
Nestorius,  Patriarch,  doctrine  of,  re- 
specting two  natures  in  Christ,  139 
. ■  resisted  by  Cyril  of  Alexandria, 

140 
• supported  by  Theodoret,  bishop 

of  Cyrus,  and  Ibas  of  Edessa,  140 
■  taught  by  Theodora  of  Mopsu- 

estia,  140 
■ withholds  the  predicate  '  Mother 

of  God '  from  Mary,  139 
Nicolas  I,  Pope,  recognizes  baptism 

in  Christ's  name  only,  137 

Origen,  held  Christ's  ransom  to  have 
been  paid  to  the  Devil,  135 

provides   stages   of   purification 

between  Hades  and  Heaven,  568. 
670 


Paley,  makes  '  authority '  depend  on 
retribution,  60,  61 

Palmer,  Herbert,  Christian  Para- 
doxes of,  received  as  Bacon's, 
177,  178 

Pantheism,  not  involved  in  immanent 
theism,  29-35 

Papal  bulls  for  inquisition  into  dia- 
bolical arts,  147-150 

chair,  dishonoured  by  'Fathers' 

not  '  holy,'  155 

Papias,  collected  the  reported  sayings 
of  Jesus,  193 

verified  his  collection  by  refer- 
ence to  John  the  Presbyter,  193 

Parable,  of  the  barren  fig-tree,  594, 595 

Prodigal  Son,  587 

Talents,  588 

Ten  Virgins,  588 

Unjust  Judge,  589 

■ Vineyard-owner,  586,  537 

Paraclete,  the,  provision  for  develop- 
ing Christ's  influence  "  into  all 
truth,"  444.  508,  509 

Parker,  Theodore,  identifies  personal 
faculty  with  inspiration,  114, 115 

Paschal  controversy.     See  Easter. 

Passover,  in  what  sense  Christ  identi- 
fied with,  531,  532 

the  last,  incidents  of,  historically 

interpreted,  530-532,  533 

Paul,  autobiography  of,  after  con- 
version, at  variance  with  Acts, 
275,  276 

conversion  of,  how  described  by 

himself,  274 

related  thrice  in  Acts  with 

discrepancies,  273 

doctrine  of,  respecting  "  original 

sin,"  385-388 

•  first  missionary  journey  of,  262 

imprisoned  at  Caesaraea  and  sent 

to  Rome,  267  269 

•  second   missionary  journey  of, 

264,  265 

special   point   of    departure  for 

the  gospel  of,  379-383 

speeches    of   in    Acts    have    no 

tincture  of  his  theology,  277-281 

theology  of,  blends  great  truths 

with  some  inconsistencies,  486- 
489 


INDEX. 


66 1 


Paul,  third  missionary  journey  of, 
2G5-2G7 

treats  divine  institutes  as  possi- 
bly provisional,  300,  301 

unrelated  to  the  historical  Jesus, 

396-398 

use  by,  of  the  antithesis — Flesh 

—Spirit,  383,  384 

with   Barnabas,  organizes  the 

Church  at  Antioch,  260 

Pelagius,  and  followers  excommuni- 
cated by  Innocent  I,  143 

doctrine    of,     condemned     by 

Synod    of    Carthage,    a.d.    416, 
143 

Penitence,  sorrow  of,  consistent  with 
joy  of  redemption,  461,  462 

Person  of  Jesus,  as  Son  of  God,  doc- 
trine of,  has  three  stages  in 
N.  T.,  237-242 

Personality,  a  modern  conception, 
without  Greek  equivalent,  419 

conditions  of,  34,  35 

Peter  Lombard,  settled  the  doctrine 
of  the  sacraments,  136 

Peter,  Simon,  Apostle,  contradicts  at 
Antioch  his  Jerusalem  repute  of 
first  baptizer  of  the  Gentiles, 
281,  282 

'  confession  of,'  scene  at,  ex- 
amined, 347-352 

■   paralleled   and   equalized  with 

Paul  throughout  Acts,  283,  284 
Petrarch,  attests  the  corrupt  morals 

of  Papal  Avignon,  155 
Philo,  admits  man  to  participation  in 

God's  essence,  400-408 
calls  the  '  Logos,'  as  the  ideal 

cosmic  scheme,  '  tlLe  only  Sou  of 

God,'  408,  409 
calls  '  Time  '  '  the  grandson  of 

God,'  409 

designates  immediate  knowledge 

of  God  as  ecstasy,  316 

■ distinguishes  the  Essence  from 

the  attributes  of  God,  404-400 

distinguishes  the  Logos,  as  in- 
strumental cause  of  the  cosmos, 
from  the  motive,  and  the  origi- 
nating cause,  411,  412 

does  not  call  the  actual  cosmos 

the  son  of  the  Logos,  410 


Philo,  explains  why  man  is  made  not 
"  an  image,"  but  "  after  the 
image,"  of  God,  414,  415 

held  the  world  indestructible,  10 

— -  makes  the  Logos  homogeneous 
in  God,  in  Nature,  and  in  Man, 
412,  413 

places  '  Wisdom  '  in  relations  of 

dependence  on  God,  408,  409 

refers  all  good  to  God  himself, 

and  evil,  moral  and  physical,  to 
his  agents,  416,  417 

reserves  the  word  '  Father  '  for 

God  in  his  absolute  Unity,  408, 
409 

saves   the   Divine   Holiness,  by 

creating    through     '  the    second 
God,'  416 

vests   mediatorial   functions  in 

God's   subordinate    agents,    418, 
419 

Pilate,  deemed  the  charge  against 
Jesus  invalid,  642 

Plato's  picture  of  the  cosmos,  5 

'  supremacy  of  knowledge,'  how 

related  to  Philo's  ecstasy,  316 

Pleasures,  whether  measured  in  both 
quality  and  quantity,  89-91 

Polycarp,  whether  a  hearer  of  the 
Apostle  John,  193 

Priest,  the,  function  of,  essentially 
antichristian,  453,  454 

Power.     See  Force. 

Prophet,  the,  function  of,  how  con- 
trasted with  the  Priest's,  453 

how   to    know   his    own    dream 

from  the  word  of  the  Lord,  317, 
318 

true  and  false,  distinction  be- 
tween, 321-324 

Protestant  disadvantage  in  reasoning 
with  the  Catholic,  169-174 

proof    of    Divine    authority  of 

Scripture,  174,  175 

reaction    towards    Catholicism, 

whence?  171-173 


Quartodecimau    controversy, 
Easter. 


Sec 


Redemption,  Jewish-Christian,  limits 
and  method  of,  463-467 


662 


INDEX. 


Redemption,  Pauline,  devised  by  '  the 

Father'    and     'the    Son,'    480, 

481 
Pauline,    from    what  group   of 

ills,  469-475 
how  effected  through   the 

cross,  477,  478 

■ not  self-redemption,  476 

• •  range  of,  how  determined, 

467-469 
vicarious,    and    collective, 

478-480 
three  types  of  doctrine  respect- 
ing, 462,  463 
Religion  and  Science,  false  partition 

of  the  world  between,  18-20 
'  Natural,'    how    antithetic    to 

'Revealed,'  302 
Repentance,   not  mentioned  in   the 

fourth  gospel,  439 
Resurrection,   answer  of  Jesus  to  the 

Sadducees  respecting   the,   632- 

684 
of  Jesus,   as  presented  to    the 

minds  of  '  the  twelve,'  363-3G6 
as  reported  to  Paul,  368, 

369 
■ a3  '  revealed '  to  Paul,  366, 

867 
supplements  expiation  by 

sanctification,  481-483 
Revelation,   cannot  be  conveyed  by 

testimony  from  mind   to  mind, 

307,  308 
cannot  make  any  use  of  miracles, 

309-311 
designated  as  ecstasy  by  Philo, 

316 
distinction  of,  from  Apocalypse, 

311.  317-319 
given  to  man,  shares  all  human 

risks,  128,  129 
how    antithetic    to    '  Natural ' 

religion,  302 
how  far  distinguished  from  in- 
tuition, 306,  307 
how  related  to  Plato's  '  suprem- 
acy of  knowledge,*  316 
Revelation,  book  of.     See  Apocalypse. 
Righteousness,  eminent,   of    a    few, 

held    to    be    credited    to     their 

country,  479,  480 


Righteousness  '  of  God,'  a  gratuitous 
gift,  as  opposed  to  oivn  right- 
eousness, 476.  478.  483,  484 

Pauline  conditions  for  attaining 

to,  390-392 

Rome,  society  in,  moral  collapse  of 
under  the  empire,  455,  456 

Sabbath,  free  dealing  with,  different!;' 

defended    in    synoptic    and    in 

fourth  gospels,  429 
Sacraments,  doctrine  of,  settled  by 

Peter  Lombard,  136 
John  of  Damascus  reckons  only 

two,  137 
of    baptism    and    communion. 

See  Baptism  and  Lord's  Supper. 
the  Dionysian  books  reckon  six, 

137 
Sadducees,  the,  question  about  the 

Resurrection  answered,  632-634 
Satan,  differently  conceived  in  synop- 
tic and  fourth  gospels,  434.  493 
has    no    part    in    the    Pauline 

scheme  of  redemption,  485 
Johannine,  has  sway  over  this 

world  and  the  allegiance  of  most 

men,  494-496 
Saul,    conversion    of,     narrated     by 

Luke,  259 
Scholten,  J.  H.,  allegorizes  the  story 

of  IMary,  mother  of  Jesus,  and 

the  beloved  disciple,  commended 

to  each  other  beneath  the  cross, 

648 
Science    and    Religion,   false   boun- 
daries of,  18-20 
Scribe's  question  '  What  is  the  first 

commandment  of  all '  answered, 

634 
Scripture,   absurdity   of   treating   as 

either  infallible  or  nothing,  287, 

288 
Scriptures,     of     N.     T.,     personally 

authentic     distinguished      from 

anonymous,  180,  181 
Simon   the   Pharisee,    scene   at    the 

table  of,  619,  620 
Sin,    Pauline     distinction    of,    from 

transgression,  386,  387 
sense  of,  due  to  the  Christian 

ideality  of  Conscience,  452,  453 


INDEX. 


663 


Sin,  sense  of,  essential  to  the  opera- 
tion of  religious  fear,  458,  459 

peculiarity  of,  in  the  re- 
ligion of  Christ,  454,  455 

• ■  quickened  by  the  Prophet, 

quelled  by  the  Priest,  453 

traces   of,   in   Pagan  and 

Jewish  religions,  454 

source  of,  according  to  the  apos- 
tle Paul,  385,  386 

"taking  away,"  in  fourth  gospel, 

means,  not  expiating,  but  puri- 
fying, 503,  504 

universality    of,    according    to 

Paul,  389,  390 

'  Son  of  David,'  the  popular  syno- 
nym for  Messiah,  335 

'  Son  of  God,'  essential  unity  of  with 
'  the  Father,'  in  the  fourth  gos- 
pel, 428-431 

has  three  stages  of  meaning 

in  N.  T.  as  applied  to  Jesus,  237- 
242 

limited  use  and  meaning  of, 

as  synonym  for  IMessiah,  333-335 

relation  between  Paul's  and 

Philo's  use  of,  427,  428 

subordination   of. 


to  'the 

Father '    in    the   fourth   gospel, 

431-433 
Son  of  Man,'  a  title  never  used  by 

the  apostle  Paul,  344 
how  turned  into  a  synonym 

for  Messiah,  336 
in  what  sense  used  by  Jesus 

ot  himself,  338,  339 
■  Jesus    does     not     identify 


himself  with  the  Messianic,  354, 

355 
power  of,   to  forgive  sius, 

interpreted,  345,  note 
three  meanings  of,  in  the 

O.  T.,  336,  337 
when   and  how  attributed 

to  Jesus  as  claiming  Llessiahship, 

339-345 
Sorcery,   Papal  edicts  against,  147- 

150 
Space,   cosmic   infinity  of,  docs  not 

disturb  Theism,  6-9 
Spencer,  Herbert,  derives  intuitions 

irom  cumulative  heredity,  99, 100 


Sj)irit,   Pauline   conception  of,  383- 

385 
Studita,   Theodore,  makes  monastic 

vows  sacramental,  137 

Temple,  the,  answers  of  Jesus  to  en- 
snaring questions  in,  032-G34 

how  affecting  Jesus  by  its  wor- 
ship, 629-632 

Temptation,  inner  conflict  of  Jesus  in 
the,  interpreted,  605,  606 

Tertullian,  subordinated  the  Son  to 
the  Father,  134 

Theodora,  Empress,  Monophysite 
partisan,  140 

Theodoret,  Bishop,  supportsNestorian 
doctrine,  140 

Theology,  early  Christian,  growth  of 
to  meet  expanding  needs,  490- 
492 

Toland's,  John,  inference  from  tbe 
reception  of  the  Yj.ku>v  ^aaiXiKr] 
179 

Tongues,  gift  of,  irreconcilably  differ- 
ent in  Acts  and  1  Corinthians, 
269-273 

Torquemada,  Cardinal  Thomas  de, 
estimated  victims  of,  156 

Tradition,  rules  for  selecting  trust- 
worthy elements  in,  577 

Trial,  the,  of  Jesus,  could  take  place 
only  before  Pilate,  640 

Trinity,  the,  unsettled  position  of 
Third  Person  in,  135 

Trutb,  Divine,  historically  trans- 
mitted, becomes  human,  289,  290 

Unity,  Catholic,  disproved  by  dealings 
with  scientists,  150,  151 

by   the    ]Monophysite 

controversy,  139-143 

by  the  Pelagian  con- 
troversy, 143,  144 

■ by  treatment  of  sor- 
cery, 144-149 

b}-    variations    about 

Christ's  person  and  work,  134-130 
by    variations     about 


the  Sacraments,  136,  137 

liow  brought  about,  152 

-  the  Divine,  differently  reached 

by  Greek  and  Jew,  402-404 


664 


INDEX. 


Universe,  duration  of,  as  aiiecting 
Greek  and  Christian  thought, 
9-11 

expansion   of,   does    not    affect 

Theism,  6-9 

for  modern  thought,  5,  6 

Usury,  Papal  prohibitions  and  prac- 
tice of,  158,  159 

Utility,  doctrine  of,  separable  from 
hedonism,  97,  98 

how  far  the  rule  of  approval,  82, 

83 

principle    of,   how    needed    for 

applied  morals,  80,  81 

Valentinus,  probably  unacquainted 
with  fourth  gospel,  196,  197 

Vigllius,  Pope,  oscillates  in  Mono- 
physite  controversy,  140,  141 

Vischer,  Eberhard,  finds  the  funda- 
mental documents  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse to  be  Jewish,  225 

Voelter,  Dr.  Daniel,  finds  the  Apoca- 
lypse a  composite  work,  224 

Volitions,  even  trivial,  determine  vast 
histories,  101,  102 

Will,  human,  unconsciously  works 
out  the  Divine,  108,  109 


Will,  meaning  of,  in  Schopenhauer, 
29 

presupposes  some  objective  da- 
tum, 32,  33 

the   original  type  of  Cause,  2. 

25-27 

Words,  the  seven,  from  the  cross,  how 
far  authentic,  648-649 

World,  chronology  of  the,  gradually 
extended,  11-13 

differently   conceived  by  Greek 

and  Christian,  9-11 

function  of  the  incarnate  Logos 

in, 496-498 

'  Prince  of  this,'  different  from 

the  synoptic  Satan,  493 

size  of  the,  does  not  affect  The- 
ism, 6-9 

the,  exceptionally  conceived  in 

the  fourth  Gospel,  492-494 

the,  God's  sphere  of  self-limita- 
tion, 36 


Zachary,  Pope,  insists  on  Trinitarian 
baptismal  formula  as  essential, 
137 

Zosimus,  Pope,  first  supports,  then 
condemns  Pelagians,  143,  144 


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CONTENTS. 


BADMINTON  LIBRARY  (THE)-    - 
BIOGRAPHY,        PERSONAL        ME- 
MOIRS,  &c. 

CHILDREN'S  BOOKS 

CLASSICAL  LITERATURE,  TRANS- 
LATIONS, ETC.         .         -         -         . 

COOKERY,  DOMESTIC  MANAGE- 
MENT, &c. 

EVOLUTION,  ANTHROPOLOGY, 
&c.       ------         - 

FICTION,  HUMOUR,  &c.   -         - 

FINE  ARTS  (THE)  AND  MUSIC      - 

FUR,  FEATHER  AND  FIN  SERIES 

HISTORY,  POLITICS,  POLITY, 
POLITICAL  MEMOIRS,  &c.    - 

LANGUAGE,  HISTORY  AND 
SCIENCE  OF 

LOGIC,  RHETORIC,  PSYCHOLOGY, 
&c. -         - 


PAGE 
12 


9 

32 1 

j 

22 
36 

21 

25 
36 
15 


17 


MENTAL,  MORAL,  AND  POLITICAL 
PHILOSOPHY  

MISCELLANEOUS  AND  CRITICAL 
WORKS 

POETRY  AND  THE  DRAMA     - 

POLITICAL    ECONOMY   AND   ECO- 
NOMICS      

POPULAR  SCIENCE  -         -         -         . 

RELIGION,  THE  SCIENCE  OF 

SILVER  LIBRARY  (THE) 

SPORT  AND  PASTIME       - 

STONYHURST      PHILOSOPHICAL 
SERIES      

TRAVEL   AND   ADVENTURE,  THE 
COLONIES,  &c.         -         -         .         - 

WORKS  OF  REFERENCE - 


17 

38 
23 

2C> 

30 
21 

33 

12 

19 

II 
31 


Abbott  (Evelyn) 

(J.  H.  M.) 

(T.  K.)       - 

(E.  A.)      -  -  17 

Acland  (A.  H.  D.)  -  3 

Acton  (Eliza)    -  -  36 

Adelborg  (O.)   -  -  32 

iEschylus           -  -  22 

Albemarle  (Earl  of)  -  13 

Alcock  (C.  W.)  -  15 

Allen  (Grant)    -  -  ^,0 

Allgood  (G.)      -  -  3 

Alverstone  (Lord)  -  15 

Angwin  (M.  C.)  -  36 

Anstey  (F.)       -  -  25 

Aristophanes    -  -  22 

Aristotle   -        -  -  17 
Arnold  (Sir  Edwin)-  11,23 

(Dr.  T.)     -  -  3 

Ashbourne  (Lord)  -  3 

Ashby  (H.)        -  -  36 

Ashley  (W.J.)-  -    3,  20 

Atkinson  (J.  J.)  -  21 

Avebury  (Lord)  -  21 

Ayre  (Rev.  J.)  -  -  31 

Bacon        -        -  -    9,17 

Bagehot  (W.)  -  9,  20,  38 

Bagwell  (R.)     -  -  3 

Bailev  (H.  C.)  ■  -  25 

Baillie  (A.  F.)  -  -  3 

Bain  (Alexander)  -  17 

Baker  ().  H.)    -  -  3S 

(Sir  S.  W.)  -  II.  12 

Baldwin  (C.  S.)  -  17 


Page 
3 


INDEX     OF     AUTHORS     AND     EDITORS 

Page  J  Page 

19,  22     Balfour  (A.  J.)  -  13,  21 

3     Ball  (John)       -        -        11 

17,18     Banks  (M.  M.)  -        -        24 

Baring-Gould(Rev.S.)2i,38 

Barnett(S.A.andH.)       20 

Baynes  (T.  S.)-        -         38 

Beaconsfield  (Earl  of)      25 

Beaufort  (Duke  of)i2, 13, 14 


Becker  (W.  A.)          -  22 

Beesly  (A.  H.)  -        -  9 

Bell  (Mrs.  Hugh)      -  23 

Bent  (J.  Theodore)  -  11 

Besant  (Sir  Walter)-  3 
Bickerdyke  (J.)          -  14,  15 

Bird  (G.)  -        -        -  23 

Blackburne  (J.  H.)    -  15 

Bland  (Mrs.  Hubert)  24 

Blount  (Sir  E.^          -  9 

Boase  (Rev.  C.  W.)-  6 

Boedder  (Rev.  B.)     -  19 

Bonnell  (H.  H.)        -  38 

Booth  (A.  J.)     -        -  38 

Bottome  (P.)    -        -  25 

Bowen  (W.  E.)         -  g 

Brassey  (Lady)          -  11 

Bright  (Rev.  J.  F.)  -  3 

Broadfoot  (Major  W.)  13 

Brooks  (H.  J.)  -        -  17 

Brough(J.)       -        -  17 

Brown  {.\.  F.)  -         -  32 

Bruce  (R.  L)     -        -  3 

Buckland  (las.)         -  32 

Buckle  (H.T.)-        -  3 

BulKT.)    -        -        -  36 


36 

36 

6 

30 
21 

3 
3 


Burke  (U.  R.)   - 
Burne-Jones  (Sir  E.) 

'  Burns  (C.  L.)    - 
Burrows  (Montagu) 

'  Butler  (E.  A.)   - 
Campbell  (Rev.  Lewis) 
Casserly  (G.)     - 
Chesney  (Sir  G.) 
Childe-Pemberton(W.S.)  9 
Chisholm  (G.  C  )      -         31 
Cholmondeley-Pennell 

(H.)  -  -  -  13 
Christie  (R.  C.)  -  38 
Churchill  (Winston  S.)  4, 25 
Cicero  -  -  -  22 
Clarke  (Rev.  R.  F.)  -  19 
Climenson  (E.  J.)  -  10 
Clodd  (Edward)  -  21,30 
Clutterbuck  (W.  J.)- 
Cocliranc  (A.)  - 
Cockcrell  (C.  R.)  - 
Colenso  (K.  J.) 
Conington  (John)  - 
Conybeare(Rev.W.  j.) 

&  Howson  (Dean) 
Coolidt;e  (W.  A.  B.) 
Corbett  (Julian  S.)   - 
Coutts  (W.)      - 
Cox  (Harding) 
Crake  (Rev.  A.  D.)    - 
Crawford  (J.  H.) 
Creed  (S.) 

Creiehton  (Bishop) -4, 
Cross  (A.  L.)    - 


12 

23 
II 

36 
23 

33 
II 

4 
22 
13 
32 
25 
25 

6,9 

5 


Page 

Crozier  (I.  B.)  -       -    9,  17 

Cutts  (Rev.  E.  L.)    -  6 

Dabney  (J.  P.)  -        -  23 

Dale  (L.)  -        -        -  4 

Dallinger  (F.  W.)     -  5 

Dauglish  (M.  G.)      -  9 

Davenport  (A.)          -  25 

Davidson  (A.  M.  C.)  22 

(W.  L.)     -      17,20,  21 

Davies  (J.  F.)   -        -  22 

Dent  (C.  T.)      -        -  14 

De  Salis  (Mrs.)         -  36 

De  Tocqueville  (A.)  -  4 

Devas  (C.  S.)    -        -  19,  20 

Dewey  (D.  K.)-        -  20 

Dickinson  (W.  H.)  -  38 

DougalKL.)      -        -  25 

Dowden  (E.)     -        -  40 

Dovle  (Sir  A.  Conan)  25 

Du'Bois(W.  E.  B.)-  5 

Dunbar  (Mary  F.)    -  25 

Dyson  (E.)       -         -  26 

Eilisd.H.)       -        -  15 

(R.  L.)       -        -  17 

Erasmus   -        .        -  g 

Evans  (Sir  John)      -  38 

Falkiner  (C.  L.)        -  4 
Farrar  (Dean)   -        -  20,  26 

Fitzmaurice  (Lord  E.)  4 

Folkard  (H.  C.)         -  15 

Ford  (H.)  -        -        -  16 

Fountain  (P      -        -  11 

Fowler  (Edith  H.)    -  26 

Francis  (Francis)      -  16 


INDEX     OF     AUTHORS     AND      RU  [TORS— continued. 


Page  \ 

Page 

Francis  (M.  E.) 

26 

erome  (Jerome  K.)  - 

27 

Freeman  (Edward  A.) 

6 

ohnson  (J.  &  J.  H.) 
ones  (H.  Bence) 

39 

Fremantle  (T.  F.)     - 

16 

31 

Frost  (G.)- 

38 

oyce  (P.  W.)    -      6, 

27 

39 

Froude  (James  A.)  4,9,11 

,26 

ustinian  - 

18 

Fuller  (F.  W.)  - 

5 

Kant  (L)    - 

18 

Furneaux  (W.) 

30 

Kaye  (Sir  J.  W.) 

6 

Gardiner  (Samuel  R.) 

5 

Keary  (C.  F.)    - 

23 

Gathorne-Hardy  (Hon. 

1 

Kelly  (E.)- 

18 

A.  E.)         -        -  15 

16, 

Kielmansegge  (F.)    - 

9 

Geikie  (Rev.  Cunning- 

Killick (Rev.  A.  H.)  - 

18 

ham) 

38  i 

Kitchin  (Dr.  G.  W.) 

6 

Gibson  (C.  H.)- 

17  ' 

Knight  (E.  F.)  - 

II 

14 

Gilkes  (A.  H.)  - 

38 

Kostlin  (J.) 

10 

Gleig  (Rev.  G.  R.)    - 

10  1 

Kristeller  (P.)   - 

37 

Graham  (A.)     - 

5 

Ladd  (G.  T.)     - 

18 

(P.  A.)       -        -15, 

16 

Lang  (Andrew)  6  ,13, 

14. 

16, 

(G.  F.)       -        - 

20 

21,  22,  23,  27, 

32, 

39 

Granby  (Marquess  of) 

15 

Lapsley  (G.  T.) 

5 

Grant  (Sir  A.)  - 

17 

Laurie  (S.  S.)   - 

6 

Graves  (R.  P.)  - 

9 

Lawrence  (F.  W.)    - 

20 

(A.  F.)       -        - 

23 

Lear  (H.  L.  Sidney)  - 

36 

Green  (T.  Hill)         -  17 

18 

Lecky  (W.  E.  H.)    6, 

18, 

23 

Greene  (E.  B.)- 

5 

Lees  (J.  A.) 

12 

Greville  (C.  C.  F.)    - 

5 

Leighton  (J.  A.) 

21 

Grose  (T.  H.)   - 

18 

Leslie  (T.  E.  Cliffe)  - 

20 

Gross  (C.) 

5 

Lieven  (Princess)     - 

6 

Grove  (Lady)    - 

II 

Lillie  (A.)  - 

16 

(Mrs.  Lilly) 

13 

Lindley(J.) 

31 

Gurnhill  (J.)     - 

18 

Locock  (C.  D.) 

16 

Gwilt  (J.)  - 

31 

Lodge  (H.  C.)  - 

6 

Haggard  (H.  Rider) 

Loftie  (Rev.  W.  J.)  - 

6 

II,  26,  27 

38 

Longman  (C.  J.) 

12 

16 

Halliwell-Phillipps(J.) 

10 

(F.  W.)      -        - 

16 

Hamilton  (Col.  H.  B.) 

5 

(G.  H.)      -        - 

13 

15 

Hamlin  (A.  D.  F.)    - 

36 

(Mrs.  C.J.)        - 

37 

Harding  (S.  B.) 

5 

Lowell  (A.  L.)  - 

6 

Hardwick  (A.  A.)      - 

II 

Lucian 

22 

Harmsworth  (A.  C.)    13 

14 

Lutoslawski  (W.)      - 

18 

Harte  (Bret)      - 

27 

Lyall  (Edna)      - 

27 

.32 

Harting(J.  E.)- 

15 

Lynch  (G.) 

6 

Hartwig  (G.)     - 

30 

(H.  F.  B.)- 

12 

Hassall  (A.)       - 

8 

Lytton  (Earl  of) 

24 

Haweis  (H.  R.)          -    9 

36 

Macaulay  (Lord)  6,7 

10 

>24 

Head  (Mrs.)      - 

37 

Macdonald  (Dr.  G.)  - 

24 

Heath  (D.  D.)  - 

17 

Macfarren  (Sir  G.  A.) 

37 

Heathcote  (J.  M.)     - 

14 

Mackail  (J.  W.) 

10 

23 

(C.  G.)       -        - 

14 

Mackenzie  (C.  G.)    - 

16 

(N.)    -        -        - 

II 

Mackinnon  (J.) 

7 

Helmholtz  (Hermann 

Macleod  (H.  D.) 

20 

von)    - 

30 

Macpherson  (Rev.H.A.) 

15 

Henderson      (Lieut- 

Madden  (D.  H.) 

16 

Col.  G.  F.  R.)  - 

9 

Magnusson  (E.) 

28 

Henry  (W.)       - 

14 

Maher  (Rev.  M.)       - 

19 

Henty  (G.  A.)  - 

32 

Mallet  (B.) 

7 

Higgins  (Mrs.  N.)    - 

9 

Malleson(Col.G.B.) 

6 

Hill  (Mabel)     - 

5 

Marbot  (Baron  de)  - 

10 

(S.  C.)       -        - 

5 

Marchment  (A.  W.) 

27 

Hillier  (G.  Lacy)      - 

13 

Marshman  (J.  C.)      - 

9 

Hime  (H.  W.  L.)      - 

22 

Maryon  (M.)     - 

39 

Hodgson  (Shadworth) 

18 

Mason  (A.  E.  W.)    - 

27 

Hoenig  (F.) 

38 

Maskelyne(J.  N.)     - 

16 

Hogan  (J.  F.)    - 

9 

Matthews  (B.) 

39 

Holmes  (R.  R.) 

10 

Maunder  (S.)    - 

31 

Homer 

22 

Max  Muller  (F.) 

Hope  (Anthony) 

27 

10,  18,  20,  21,  22, 

27 

,39 

Horace 

22 

May  (Sir  T.  Erskine) 

7 

l.uuston  (D.  F.) 

5 

Meade  (L.  T.)  - 

32 

Howard  (Lady  Mabel) 

27 

Melville(G.J.Whyte) 

27 

Howitt  (W.)      - 

II 

Merivale  (Dean) 

7 

Hudson  (W.  H.)       - 

30 

Mernman  ^H.  S.) 

27 

Huish  (M.  B.)  - 

37 

Mill  (John  Stuart)    - 

18 

,  20 

Hullahd.) 

37 

Millais  (J.  G.)  - 

16 

,  30 

Hume  (David)  - 

18 

Milner  (G.) 

40 

(M.  A.  S.) 

3 

Monck(W.  H.  S.)    - 

19 

Hunt  (Rev.  W.) 

6 

'  Montague  (F.  C.)     - 

7 

Hunter  (Sir  W.)      - 

6 

Moore  (T.) 

31 

Hutchinson  (Horace  G.) 

(Rev.  Edward)  - 

17 

13.  16,  2/ 

,38 

Moran  (T.  F.)  - 

7 

Ingelow  (Jean) 

23 

Morgan  (C.  Lloyd)  - 

21 

Ingram  (T.  D.) 

6 

Morris  (W.)      -    22, 

23 

24- 

James  (W.)       -        -  18, 21 

27.  28, 

37 

,40 

Jameson  (Mrs.  Anna) 
Jefferies  (Richard)    - 

37 

Mulhall  (M.  G.) 

20 

38 

Murray  (Hilda) 

33 

Jekyll  (Gertrude)      - 

38 

1  Myers'(F.  W.  H.)     - 

19 

Page 
Nansen  (F.)  -  -  12 
Nash  (V.)  -        -        -  7 

Nesbit  (E.)  -  -  24 
Nettleship  (R.  L.)  -  17 
Newman  (Cardinal)  -  28 
Nichols  (F.  M.)         -  9 

Oakesmith  (J.)  -  -  22 
Ogilvie  (R.)  -  -  22 
Oldfield  (Hon.  Mrs.)  9 

Osbourne  (L.)  -  -  28 
Packard  (A.  S.)  -  21 
Paget  (Sir  J.)  -  -  10 
Park(W.)  -        -         i6 

Parker  (B.)  -  -  40 
Payne-Gallwey(SirR.)i4,i6 
Pears  (E.)  -        -  7 

Pearse  (H.  H.  S.)     -  5 

Peek  (Hedley)  -  -  14 
Pemberton     (W.    S. 

Childe-)  -        -  9 

Penrose  (H.  H.)  -  33 
Phillipps-Wollev(C.)  12,28 
Pierce  (A.  H.)  -  -  19 
Pole  (VV.)  -  -  -  17 
Pollock  (W.  H.)  -  13,40 
Poole  (W.H.  and  Mrs.)  36 
Poore  (G.  V.)  -  -  40 
Portman  (L.)  -  -  28 
Powell  (E.)       -        -  7 

Powys  (Mrs.  P.  L.)  -  10 
Praeger  (S.  Rosamond)  33 
Pritchett  (R.  T.)  -  14 
Proctor  (R.  A.)  16,  30,  35 
Raine  (Rev.  James)  -  6 

Ramal  (W.)  -  -  24 
Randolph  (C.  F.)      -  7 

Rankin  (R.)  -  -  8,  25 
Ransome  (Cyril)  -  3,  8 
Reid(S.  J.)        .        -  9 

Rhoades  (J.)  -  -  23 
Rice  (S.  P.)  -  -  12 
Rich  (A.)  -  -  -  23 
Richmond  (Ennis)  -  19 
Rickaby  (Rev.  John)         19 

(Rev.  Joseph)    -        19 

Riley  (J.  W.)  -  -  24 
Roberts  (E.  P.)  -  33 
Robertson  (W.  G.)  -  37 
Roget  (Peter  M.)  -  20,  31 
Romanes  (G.  J.)  10, 19,21,24 
10 

17 

6 

28 

40 
36 

14 

10 

18 

9 


Page 
Stanley  (Bishop)  -  31 
Stebbing  (W.)  -  -  28 
Steel  (A.  G.)  -  -  13 
Stephen  (Leslie)  -  12 
Stephens  (H.  Morse)  8 

Sternberg       (Count 

Adalbert)   -        -  8 

Stevens  (R.  W.)  -  40 
Stevenson  (R.  L.)  25,28,33 
Storr  (F.)  -  -  -  17 
Stuart-Wortley(A.  J.)  14, 15 
Stubbs  (J.  W.)- 

(W.)-        -        - 

Suffolk  &L  Berkshire 

(Earlol)  - 
Sullivan  (Sir  E.) 
Sully  (James)  - 
Sutherland  (A.  and  G.) 


(Mrs.  G.  J.) 
Ronalds  (A.)      - 
Roosevelt  (T.)  - 
Ross  (Martin)  - 
Rossetti  (Maria  Fran- 
cesca)     -        -        . 
Rotheram  (M.  A.)    - 
Rowe  (R.  P.  P.) 
Russell  (Lady)  - 
Sandars  (T.  C.) 
Sanders  (E.  K.) 
Savage-Armstrong(G.F.)25 

Seebohm  (F.)    -        -  8,  10 

Selous  (F.  C.)   -        -  12,  17 

Senior  (W.)       -        -  13, 15 

Seton-Karr  (Sir  H.)-  8 
Sewell  (Elizabeth  M.)       28 

Shadwell  (A.)    -        -  40 

Shakespeare      -        -  25 

Shaw  (W.  A.)   -        -  8 

Shearman  (M.)          -  12,  13 

Sheehan  (P.  A.)         -  28 

Sheppard  (E.)  -        -  8 

Sinclair  (A.)      -        -  14 

Skrine  (F.  H.)  -        -  9 

Smith  (C.  Fell)         -  10 

(R.  Bosworth)  -  8 

(T.  C.)       -        -  5 

(W.  P.  Haskett)  12 

Somerville  (E.)         -  28 

Sophocles          -        -  23 

Soulsby  (Lucy  H.)    -  40 

Southey  (R.)     -        -  40 
Spedding  (J.)     -        -    9,  17 

Spender  (A.  E.)        -  12 


8 
8 

14 
14 
19 
8 
40 
29 

19 
20 

7 
10 

33 

8 

23 
19 

8 
23 
10 
40 

8 

7 

20 


(Alex.)       -        -  19, 

Suttner  (B.  von) 
Swinburne  (A.  J.) 
Symes  (J.  E.)    - 
Tait(J.)     -        -        - 
Tallentyre  (S.  G.)     - 
Tappan  (E.  M.) 
Taylor  (Col.  Meadows) 
Theophrastus  - 
Thomas  (J.  W.) 
Thomson  (H.  C.) 
ThornhilKW.  J.)      - 
Thornton  (T.  H.)     - 
Thuillier  (H.  F.)       - 
Todd  (A.)  - 
Tout  (T.  F.)      - 
Toynbee  (A.)     - 
Trevelyan  (Sir  G.  O.) 

6,  7,  8,  9,  10 

(G.  M.)      -        -7.8 

(R.  C.)      -        -  25 

Trollope  (Anthony)-  29 

Turner  (ri.  G.)          -  40 

Tyndall  (J.)        -        -    9,  12 

T\Trell  (K.  Y.)  -        -  22,  23 

Unwin  (R.)        -        -  40 

Upton(F.K. and  Bertha)  33 

Van  Dyke  (J.  C.)      -  37 

Vanderpoel  (E.  N.)  -  37 

Virgil         -        -        -  23 

Wagner  (R.)     -        -  25 

Wakeman  (H.  O.)     -  8 

Walford  (L.  B.)         -  29 

Wallas  (Graham)      -  10 

(Mrs.  Graham)-  32 

Walpole  (Sir  Spencer)  8,  10 

(Horace)    -        -  10 

Walrond  (Col.  H.)    -  12 

Walsingham  (Lord)-  14 

Ward  (Mrs.  W.)       -  29 

Warner  (P.  F.)          -  17 

Warwick  (Countess  of)  40 
Watson  (A.  E.  T.)  12, 13,  14 

Weathers  (J.)    -        -  40 
Webb  (Mr.  and  Mrs. 

Sidney)       -        -  20 

(Judge  T.)         -  40 

(T.  E.)       -        -  19 

Weber  (A.)        -        -  19 

Weir  (Capt.  R.)         -  14 
Wellington  (Duchess  of)  37 

Wemyss  (M.  C.  E.)-  33 

Weyman  (Stanley)  -  29 
Whately(Archbishop)  17,19 

Whitelaw  (R.)  -        -  23 

WhittalKSirJ.  W.)-  40 

Wilkins  (G.)      -        -  23 

(W.  H.)     -        -  10 

Willard  (A.  R.)         -  37 

Willich  (C.  M.)         -  31 

Wood  (Rev.  J.  G.)    -  31 

Wood-Martin  (W.  G.)  22 

Wyatt  (A.  J.)    -        -  24 

Wylie  (J.  H.)    -        -  8 

Yeats  (S.  Levett)      -  29 

Yoxall  (J.  H.)  -        -  29 

ZeIler(E.)         -        -  19 


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Grey,  Bart,  G.C.B.,  1799-1S82.  By 
Mandell  Creighton,  D.D.,  late  Lord 
Bishop  of  London.  With  3  Portraits. 
Crown  8vo.,  6s.  net. 

Hamilton. — Life  of  Sir  William 
Hamilton.  By  R.  P.  Graves.  Svo.  3  vols. 
155.  each.     Addendum.     Svo.,  6rf.  sewed. 

Harrow    School    Register  (The), 

iSoi-igoo.  Second  Edition,  igoi.  Edited 
by  M.  G.  Dauglish,  Barrister-at-Law. 
Svo.      IDS.  net. 

Havelock. — Memoirs  of  Sir  LIenry 
Havelock,  K.C.B.  By  John  Clark 
Marshman.     Crown  Svo.,  3s.  6rf. 

Haweis. — My  Musical  Life.  By  the 
Rcv.H.R.Haweis.  With  Portrait  of  Richard 
Wagner  and  3  Illustrations.  Cr.  Svo.,  6s.  net. 

Higgins. —  The  Bernards  of  Abing- 

I  ON  and  Nether  WtNcriENnoN :  A  Family 
History.  By  Mrs.  Napier  Higgins.  2 
Vols.     Svo.,  21S.  net. 

Hunter. — -The  Life  of  Sir  William 
Wilson  Hunter,  K.C.S.I.,  M.A.,  LL.D. 
Author  of  '  A  History  of  British  India,'  etc. 
By  Francis  Henry  Skrine,  F".S.S.  With 
6  Portraits  (2  Photogravures)  and  4  other 
Illustrations.     Svo.,  i6s.  net. 

Jackson. — Stonewall  Jackson  and 
THE  American  Civil  War.  By  Lieut. -Col. 
G.  F.  R.  Henderson.  With  2  Portraits  and 
33  Maps  and  Plans.  2  vols.  Cr.  Svo.,  i6s.  net. 

Kielmansegge. — Diary  of  a  Jour- 
ney  TO  England  in  the   Years   1761- 
1762.      By    Count    Frederick     Kielman- 
segge.   With  4  Illustrations.     Crown  Svo. 
5s.  net. 

Luther.  —  Life  of  Luther.  By 
Julius  Kostlin.  With  62  Illustrations 
and  4  Facsimilies  of  MSS.     Cr.  8vo.,  31.  6rf. 


lo        MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Biography,   Personal  Memoirs,   &e. — continued. 


Macaulay. — The  Life  and  Letters 
OF  Lord  Macaulay.  By  the  Right  Hon. 
Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan,  Bart.  [ 

Popular  Edition,    i  vol.    Cr.  8vo.,  25.  6rf.  ' 

StudenVs  Edition      1  vol.     Cr.  8vo.,  6s. 

Cabinet  Edition.     2  vols.     Post  8vo.,  12s. 

' Edinburgh' Edition.  2 vols.  8vo.,65. each. 

Library  Edition.     2  vols.     8vo.,  36s. 

Marbot.  —  The  Memoirs  of  the 
Baron  DE  Marbot.     2  vols.     Cr.  8vo.,  7s. 

Max  Miiller  (F.) 

The  Life  and  Letters  of  the 
Right  Hon.  Friedrich  Max  Muller. 
Edited  by  his  Wife.  With  Photogravure 
Portraits  and  other  Illustrations.  2  vols., 
8vo.,  32s.  net. 

Mv  Autobiography  :  a  Fragment. 
With  6  Portraits.     8vo.,  12s.  bd. 

AuLD  Lang  Syne.  Second  Series. 
8vo.,  I05.  6rf. 

Chips  from  a  German  Workshop. 
Vo1.il   Biographical  Essays.  Cr.8vo.,5s. 

Meade. — Genera  l  Sir  Rich  a  rd 
Meade  and  the  Feudatory  States  of 
Central  and  Southern  India.  By 
Thomas  Henry  Thornton.  With  Portrait, 
Map  and  Illustrations.     8vo.,  los.  6d.  net. 

Morris.  —  The  Life  of  William 
Morris.  By  J.  W.  Mackail.  With  2  Por- 
traits and  8  other  Illustrations  by  E.  H.  New, 
etc.     2  vols.     Large  Crown  8vo.,  los.  net. 

On  the  Banks  of  the  Seine.     By 

A.  M.  F.,  Author  of  'Foreign  Courts  and 
Foreign  Homes'.     Crown  8vo.,  6s. 

Paget. — Memoirs  and  Letters  of 
Sir  James  Paget.  Edited  by  Stephen 
Paget,  one  of  his  sons.  With  Portrait. 
8vo.,  6s.  net. 

Place. — The  Life  of  Francis  Place, 
1771-1854.  By  Graham  Wallas,  M.A. 
With  2  Portraits.     8vo.,  12s. 

Powys. — Passages  from  theDiaries 
OF  Mrs.  Philip  Lybbe  Powys,  of  Hard- 
wick  House,  Oxon.  1756-1808.  Edited  by 
Emily  J.  Climenson.     8vo.,  gilt  top,  i6s. 

Ramakr/sh/ia  :     JLis     Life     and 

Sayings.      By   the    Right   Hon.    F.    Max 
MiJLLER.     Crown  8vo.,  5s. 

Rich. — Mary  Rich,  Countess  of 
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tions.    8vo.,  gilt  top,  i8s.  net. 


Rochester,    and    other    Literary 

Rakes  of  the  Court  of  Charles  IL,  with 
some  Account  of  their  Surroundings.     By 

the  Author  of  '  The  Life  of  Sir  Kenelm 
Digby,'  The  Life  of  a  Prig,'  etc.  With  15 
Portraits.     8vo.,  i6s. 

Romanes. — The  Life  and  Letters 
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F.R.S.  Written  and  Edited  by  his  Wife. 
With  Portrait  and  2  Illustrations.  Cr.  8vo., 
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Russell. SlVALLOlVFIELD     AND     ITS 

Owners.  By  Constance  Lady  Russell, 
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Seebohm. — TheOxford  Reformers 
— John  Colet,  Erasmus,  and  Thomas 
More  :  a  History  of  their  Fellow- Work. 
By  Frederic  Seebohm.     8vo.,  14s. 

Shakespeare.  —  Outlines  of  the 
Life  of  Shakespeare.  By  J.  O.  Halli- 
well-Phillipps.  With  Illustrations  and 
Facsimiles.     2  vols.     Royal  8vo.,  21s. 

F. 


Tales  of  my  Father.— By  A.  M. 

Crown  8vo.,  6s. 

Tallentyre. — The    Women  of  the 

Salons,  and  other  French  Portraits.  By 
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Victoria,    Queen,    1819-1901.      By 

Richard  R.  Holmes,  M.V.O.,  F.S.A. 
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Walpole. — Some  Unpublished 
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by  Sir  Spencer  Walpole,  K.C.B.  With 
2  Portraits.     Crown  8vo.,  4s.  &d.  net. 

Wellington. — Life  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington.  By  the  Rev.  G.  R. 
Gleig,  M.A.     Crown  8vo.,  35.  td. 

Wilkins  (W.  H.). 

Caroline  theLllustrious,  Queen- 
Consort  OF  George  II.  and  sometime 
!  Queen-Regent:    a  Study  of  Her  Life 

and  Time.     2  vols.     8vo.,  36s. 

The    Love    of    an      Uncrowned 

Queen:  Sophie  Dorothea,  Consort  of 
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MESSRS.   LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


II 


Travel  and  Adventure,  the  Colonies,  &e. 


Arnold. — Seas  and  Lands.  By  Sir 
Edwin  Arnold.  With  71  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  3s.  td. 

Baker  (Sir  S.  W.). 

Eight  Years  in  Ceylon.  With  6 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6rf. 

The  Rifle  and  the  Hound  in 
Ceylon.    With  6  Illusts.    Cr.  8vo.,3s.  6i. 

Ball  (John). 

The  Alpine  Guide.  Reconstructed 
and  Revised  on  behalf  of  the  Alpine  Club, 
by  W.  A.  B.  CooLiDGE. 

Vol.  I.,  The  Western  Alps:  the  Alpine 
Region,  South  of  the  Rhone  Valley, 
from  the  Col  de  Tenda  to  the  Simplon 
Pass.  With  9  New  and  Revised  Maps. 
Crown  8vo.,  i2j.  net. 

Hints  and  Notes,  Practical  and 
Scientific,  for  Travellers  in  the 
Alps:  being- a  Revision  of  the  General 
Introduction  to  the  '  Alpine  Guide  '. 
Crown    8vo.,    3s.    net. 

Bent. — The  Ruined  Cities  of  Ma- 
SHONALAND  :  being  a  Record  of  Excavation 
and  Exploration  in  1891.  By  J.  Theodore 
Bent.  With  117  Illustrations.  Crown 
8vo.,  3s.  td. 

Brassey  (The  Late  Lady). 

A   Vo YA GE  in  the  '  SUNBEA m'  ;    O UR 

Home   on   the    Ocean  for    Eleven 

Months. 

Cabinet  Edition.  With  Map  and  66  Illus- 
trations.    Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  7s.  6d. 

'  Silver  Library  '  Edition.  With  66  Illus- 
trations.    Crown  8vo.,  35.  bd. 

Popular  Edition.  With  60  Illustrations. 
4to.,  6d.  sewed,  is.  cloth. 

School  Edition.  With  37  Illustrations. 
Fcp.,  2S.  cloth,  or  3s.  white  parchment. 

Sunshine  and  Storm  in  the  East. 

Popular  Edition.  With  103  Illustrations. 
4to.,  Qd.   sewed,   is.   cloth. 

In  the  Trades,  the  Tropics,  and 
the  '  Roaring  Forties  '. 
Cabinet  Edition.    With  Map  and  220  Illus- 
trations.    Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  js.  6d. 

Cockerell. — Travels  in  Southern 
Europe  and  the  Levant,  1810-1817.  By 
C.  R.  Cockerell,  Architect,  R.A.  Edited 
by  his  Son,  Samuel  Pepvs  Cockerell. 
With  Portrait.     8vo. 


Fountain  (Paul). 

The  Great  Deserts  and  Forests 
OF  North  America.  With  a  Preface  by 
W.  H.  Hudson,  Author  of  The  Naturalist 
in  La  Plata,'  etc.     8vo.,  gs.  6ff.  net. 

The  Great  Mountains  and 
Forests  of  South  America.  With 
Portrait  and  7  Illustrations.  8vo.,  los.  M. 
net. 

Froude  (James  A.). 

Oceana  :  or  England  and  her  Col- 
onies. With  9  Illustrations.  Cr.  8vo.,3s.  M. 

The  English  IN  THE  West  Indies  : 
or,  the  Bow  of  Ulysses.  With  9  Illustra- 
tions. Crown  8vo.,  25.  boards,  25.  6d.  clotli. 

Grove. — Sei-enty-one  Days'  Camp- 
ing in  Morocco.  By  Lady  Grove.  With 
Photogravure  Portrait  and  32  Illustrations 
from  Photographs.     8vo.,  7s.  6(f.  net. 

Haggard. — A  Winter  Pilgrimage  : 
Being  an  Account  of  Travels  through 
Palestine,  Italy  and  the  Island  of  Cyprus, 
undertaken  in  the  year  1900.  By  H.  Rider 
Haggard.  With  31  Illustrations  from  Photo- 
graphs.    Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  top,  I2S.  6(f.  net. 

Hardwick. — An  Ivory  Trader   in 

North  Ken/a  :  the  Record  of  an  Expedi- 
tion to  the  Country  North  of  Mount  Kenia 
in  East  Equatorial  Africa,  with  an  account 
of  the  Nomads  of  Galla-Land.  By  A. 
Arkell-Hardwick,  F.R.G.S.  With  23 
Illustrations  from  Photographs,  and  a  Map. 
8vo.,  125.  6(7.  net. 

Heathcote.— ^r.  Kilda.  By  Nor- 
man Heathcote.  With  80  Illustrations 
from  Sketches  and  Photographs  of  the 
People,  Scenery  and  Birds  by  the  Author. 
8vo.,  I05.  bd.  net. 

Howitt. —  Visits  to  Remarkable 
Places.  Old  Halls,  Battle-Fields,  Scenes, 
illustrative  of  Striking  Passages  in  English 
History  and  Poetry.  By  William  Howitt. 
With  80  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  '^s.  6d. 

Knight  (E.  F.). 

With  the  Royal  Tour  :  a  Narra- 
tive of  the  Recent  Tour  of  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  Cornwall  and  York  through 
Greater  Britain.  With  16  Illustrations 
and  a  Map.     Crown  8vo.,  5s.  net. 

The  Cruise  of  the  '  Alerte  ' :  the 
Narrative  of  a  Search  for  Treasure  on  the 
Desert  Island  of  Trinidad.  With  2  Maps 
and  23  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  35.  6d. 


12         MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Travel  and  Adventure,  the  Colonies,  &c. — continued. 


Knight  (E.  F.) — continued. 

Where  Three  Empires  Meet:  a 
Narrative  of  Recent  Travel  in  Kashmir, 
Western  Tibet,  Baltistan,  Ladak,  Gilgit, 
and  the  adjoining  Countries.  With  a 
Map  and  54  Illustrations.    Cr.  8vo.,  3s.  dd. 

The  '■Falcon'  on  the  Baltic:  a 
Voyage  from  London  to  Copenhagen  in 
a  Three-Tonner.  With  10  Full-page 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  bd. 

Lees.— -P^^A'5-  AND  Fines  :  another 
Norway  Book.  By  J.  A.  Lees.  With  63 
Illustrations  and  Photographs.     Cr.  8vo.,  6s. 

Lees  and  Clutterbuck.— B.C.  1887  : 

A  Ramble  IN  British  Columbia.  By  J.  A. 
Lees  and  W.  J.  Clutterbuck.  With  Map 
and  75  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  bd. 

Lynch. — Armenia  :  Travels  and 
Studies.  By  H.  F.  B.  Lynch.  With  197 
Illustrations  (some  in  tints)  reproduced 
from  Photographs  and  Sketches  by  the 
Author,  16  Maps  and  Plans,  a  Bibliography, 
and  a  Map  of  Armenia  and  adjacent 
countries.  2  vols.  Medium  8vo.,  gilt  top, 
42s.  net. 

Nansen. — The  First  Crossing  of 
Greenland.  By  Fridtjof  Nansen.  With 
143  Illustrations  and  a  Map.  Crown  8vo., 
35.  ()d. 


Rice. — Occasional  Essays  on  Na- 
tive South  Indian  Life.  By  Stanley 
P.  Rice,  Indian  Civil  Service.     8vo.,  los.  6rf. 

Smith- — Climbing  in  the  British 
Isles.  By  W.  P.  Haskett  Smith.  With 
Illustrations  and  Numerous  Plans. 

Part  I.  England.     i6mo.,  3s.  net. 

Part  II.   fVALES  AND  Ireland.     i6mo., 
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Spender. — Tivo  Winters  in  Nor- 
way :  being  an  Account  of  Two  Holidays 
spent  on  Snow-shoes  and  in  Sleigh  Driving, 
and  including  an  Expedition  to  the  Lapps. 
By  A.  Edmund  Spender.  With  40  Illustra- 
tions from  Photographs.     8vo.,  los.  bd.  net. 

Stephen.  —  The  Flay- Ground  of 
Europe  (The  Alps).  By  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen,  K.C.B.  With  4  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  3s.  bd. 

Three    in    Norway.      By  Two  of 

Them.     With  a  Map  and  59  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  25.  boards,  2s.  bd.  cloth. 

Tyndall. — (John). 

The  Glaciers  of  the  Alps.    With 
61  Illustrations.    Crown  8vo.,  6s.  (td.  net. 

Hours  of  Exercise  in  the  Alps. 
With  7  Illustrations.    Cr.  8vo.,  6s.  dd.  net. 


Sport  and   Pastime. 

THE  BADMINTON  LIBRARY. 

Edited  by  HIS  GRACE  THE  (EIGHTH)  DUKE  OF  BEAUFORT,  K.G., 

and  A.  E.  T.  WATSON. 


ARCHER  V.  By  C.  J.  Longman  and 
Col.  H.Walrond.  With  Contributions  by 
Miss  Legh,  Viscount  Dillon,  etc.  With 
2  Maps,  23  Plates  and  172  Illustrations  in 
the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net;  half- 
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ATHLETICS.  By  Montague 
Shearman.  With  Chapters  on  Athletics 
at  School  by  W.  Beacher  Thomas  ;  Ath- 
letic Sports  in  America  by  C.  H.  Sherrill  ; 
a  Contribution  on  Paper-chasing  by  W.  Rye, 
and  an  Introduction  by  Sir  Richard  Web- 
ster (Lord  Alverstone).  With  12  Plates 
and  37  Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Cr.  8vo., 
cloth,  6s.  net ;  half-bound,with  gilt  top, 9s.net. 


BIG     GAME     SHOOTING.       By 

Clive  Phillipps-Wolley. 

Vol.  I.  AFRICA  AND  AMERICA. 
With  Contributions  by  Sir  Samuel  W. 
Baker,  W.  C.  Oswell,  F.  C.  Selous, 
etc.  With  20  Plates  and  57  Illustrations 
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Vol.  n.  EUROPE,  ASIA,  AND  THE 
ARCTIC  REGIONS.  With  Contribu- 
tions by  Lieut. -Colonel  R.  Heber 
Percy,  Major  Algernon  C.  Heber 
Percy,  etc.  With  17  Plates  and  56  Illus- 
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MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


13 


Sport  and   Pastime — continued. 
THE    BADMINTON    LIBRARY— 6o«^/;r»^^. 

Edited  by  HIS  GRACE  THE  (EIGHTH)  DUKE  OF  BEAUFORT,  K.G., 

and  A.  E.  T.  WATSON. 


BILLIARDS.  By  Major  W.  Broad- 
foot,  R.E.  With  Contributions  by  A.  H. 
Boyd,  Sydenham  Dixon,  W.  J.  Ford,  etc. 
With  II  Plates,  19  Illustrations  in  the  Text, 
and  numerous  Diagrams.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth, 
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COURSING  AND  FALCONRY. 
By  Harding  Cox,  Charles  Richardson, 
and  the  Hon.  Gerald  Lascelles.  With 
20  Plates  and  55  Illustrations  in  the  Text. 
Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  65.  net;  half-bound,  with 
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CRICKET.  By  A.  G.  Steel  and 
the  Hon.  R.  H.  Lyttelton.  With  Con- 
tributions by  Andrew  Lang,  W.  G.  Grace, 
F.  Gale,  etc.  With  13  Plates  and  52  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s. 
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CYCLING.  By  the  Earl  of  Albe- 
marle and  G.  Lacy  Hillier.  With  ig 
Plates  and  44  Illustrations  in  the  Text. 
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DANCING.  By  Mrs.  Lilly  Grove. 
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Musical  Examples,  and  38  Full-page  Plates 
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DRIVING.  By  His  Grace  the  (Eighth) 
Duke  of  Beaufort,  K.G.  With  Contribu- 
tions by  A.  E.  T.  Watson  the  Earl  of 
Onslow,  etc.  With  12  Plates  and  54  Illus- 
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FENCING,  BOXING,  AND 
WRESTLING.  By  Walter  H.  Pollock, 
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and  Walter  Armstrong.  With  18  Plates 
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FISHING. 

Pennell. 


By  H.   Cholmondeley- 


Vol.  I.  SALMON  AND  TROUT.  With 
Contributions  by  H.  R.  Francis,  Major 
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Vol.  II.  PIKE  AND  OTHER  COARSE 
FISH.  With  Contributions  by  the 
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G.  Christopher  Davis,  etc.  With 
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FOOTBALL.  History,  by  Mon- 
tague Shearman  ;  The  Association 
Game,  by  W.  J.  Oakley  and  G.  O.  Smith  ; 
The  Rugby  Union  Game,  by  Frank 
Mitchell.  With  other  Contributions  by 
R.  E.  Macnaghten,  M.  C.  Kemp,  J.  E. 
Vincent,  Walter  Camp  and  A.  Suther- 
land. With  ig  Plates  and  35  Illustrations 
in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net ; 
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GOLF.    By  Horace  G.  Hutchinson. 

With  Contributions  by  the  Rt.  Hon.  A.  J. 
Balfour,  M. P.,  Sir  Walter  Simpson,  Bart., 
Andrew  Lang,  etc.  With  34  Plates  and  56 
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HUNTING.  By  His  Grace  the 
(Eighth)  Duke  of  Beaufort,  K.G.,  and 
Mowbray  Morris.  With  Contributions  by 
the  Earl  of  Suffolk  and  Berkshire, 
Rev.  E.  W.  L.  Davies,  G.  H.  Longman, 
etc.  With  5  Plates  and  54  Illustrations  in 
the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net  ;  half- 
bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 

MOTORS  AND  MOTOR-DRIV- 
ING. By  Alfred  C.  Harmsworth,  the 
Marquis  de  Chasseloup-Laubat,  the 
Hon.  John  Scott-Montagu,  R.  J.  Me- 
credy,  the  Hon.  C.  S.  Rolls,  Sir  David 
Salomons,  Bart.,  etc.  With  13  Plates  and 
136  Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo., 
cloth,  gs.  net;  half-bound,  12s.  net. 
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14        MESSRS.   LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Sport  and  Pastime — continued. 

THE   BADMINTON   LIBRARY— co«^i»«^^/. 

Edited  by  HIS  GRACE  THE  (EIGHTH)   DUKE  OF  BEAUFORT,  K.G., 

and  A.  E.  T.  WATSON. 


M0UNTA1N.EERING.  By  C.  T. 
Dent.  With  Contributions  by  the  Right 
Hon.  J.  Bryce,  M.P.,  Sir  Martin  Conway, 
D.  W.  Freshfield,  C.  E.  Matthews,  etc. 
With  13  Plates  and  gi  Illustrations  in  the 
Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  65.  net ;  half- 
bound,  with  gilt  top,  95.  net. 

POETRY  OF  SPORT  {THE).— 
Selected  by  Hedley  Peek.  With  a 
Chapter  on  Classical  Allusions  to  Sport  by 
Andrew  Lang,  and  a  Special  Preface  to 
the  BADMINTON  LIBRARY  by  A.  E.  T. 
Watson.  With  32  Plates  and  74  Illustra- 
tions in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  65. 
net ;  half-bound,  with  gilt  top,  95.  net. 

RACING  AND  STEEPLE-CHAS- 
ING. By  the  Earl  of  Suffolk  and 
Berkshire,  W.  G.  Craven,  the  Hon.  F. 
Lawley,  Arthur  Coventry,  and  A.  E.  T. 
Watson.  With  Frontispiece  and  56  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  65. 
net ;  half-bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 

RIDING  AND  POLO.  By  Captain 
Robert  Weir,  J.  Moray  Brown,  T.  F. 
Dale,  The  Late  Duke  of  Beaufort,  The 
Earl  of  Suffolk  and  Berkshire,  etc. 
With  18  Plates  and  41  Illusts.  in  the  Text. 
Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net ;  half-bound, 
with  gilt  top,  95.  net. 

ROWING.  By  R.  P.  P.  Rowe  and 
C.  M.  Pitman.  With  Chapters  on  Steering 
by  C.  P.  Serocold  and  F.  C.  Begg  ;  Met- 
ropolitan Rowing  by  S.  Le  Blanc  Smith  ; 
andonPUNTINGby  P.  W.  Squire.  With 
75  Illustrations.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net ; 
half-bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 

SHOOTING. 

Vol.  I.  FIELD  AND  COVERT.  By  Lord 
Walsingham  and  Sir  Ralph  Payne- 
Gallwey,  Bart.  With  Contributions  by 
the  Hon.  Gerald  Lascelles  and  A.  J. 
Stuart-Wortley.  With  11  Plates  and 
95  Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo., 
cloth,  6s.  net ;  half-bound,  with  gilt  top, 
gs.  net. 

Vol.  II.  MOOR  AND  MARSH.  By 
Lord  Walsingham  and  Sir  Ralph  Payne- 
Gallwey,  Bart.  With  Contributions  by 
Lord  Lovat  and  Lord  Charles  Lennox 
Kerr.  With  8  Plates  and  57  Illustrations 
in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net ; 
half-bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 


SEA  FISHING.  By  John  Bicker- 
dyke,  Sir  H.  W.  GoRE-BooTH,  Alfred 
C.  Harmsworth,  and  W.  Senior.  With  22 
Full-page  Plates  and  175  Illusts.  in  the  Text. 
Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net ;  half-bound,  with 
gilt  top,  gs.  net. 


SKATING,  CURLING,  TOBOG- 
GANING. By  J.  M.  Heathcote,  C.  G. 
Tebbutt,  T.  Maxwell  Witham,  Rev. 
John  Kerr,  Ormond  Hake,  Henry  A. 
Buck,  etc.  With  12  Plates  and  272  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s. 
net ;  half-bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 


SWIMMING.  By  Archibald  Sin- 
clair and  William  Henry,  Hon.  Sees,  of  the 
Life-Saving  Society.  With  13  Plates  and  112 
Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth, 
6s.  net  ;  half-bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 


TENNIS,        LA  WN       TENNIS, 

RACKETS  AND  FIVES.  By  J.  M.  and 
C.  G.  Heathcote,  E.  O.  Pleydell-Bou- 
VERiE,  and  A.  C.  Ainger.  With  Contributions 
by  the  Hon.  A.  Lyttelton,  W.  C.  Mar- 
shall, Miss  L.  DoD,  etc.  With  14  Plates  and 
65  Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo., 
cloth,  6s.  net ;  half-bound,  with  gilt  top, 
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YACHTING. 

Vol.  I.  CRUISING,  CONSTRUCTION 
OF  YACHTS,  YACHT  RACING 
RULES,  FITTING-OUT,  etc.  By  Sir 
Edward  Sullivan,  Bart.,  The  Earl  of 
Pembroke,  Lord  Brassey,  K.C.B.,  C. 
E.  Seth-Smith,  C.B.,  G.  L.  Watson,  R. 
T.  Pritchett,  E.  F.  Knight,  etc.  With 
21  Plates  and  93  Illustrations  in  the 
Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  6s.  net ;  half- 
bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 

Vol.  II.  YACHT  CLUBS,  YACHT- 
ING IN  AMERICA  AND  THE 
COLONIES,  YACHT  RACING,  etc. 
By  R.  T.  Pritchett,  The  Marquis  of 
Dufferin  and  Ava,  K.P.,  The  Earl  of 
Onslow,  James  McFerran,  etc.  With 
35  Plates  and  160  Illustrations  in  the 
Text.  Crown  8vo.,  cloth,  gs.  net;  half- 
bound,  with  gilt  top,  gs.  net. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS.         15 


Sport  and  Pastime — continued. 
FUR,    FEATHER,   AND    FIN   SERIES. 

Edited  by  A.  E.  T.  Watson. 

Crown  8vo.,  price  5s.  each  Volume,  cloth. 

\*  The  Volumes  arc  also  issued  half-boiuid  in  Leather,  with  gilt  top.     Price  js.  6d.  net  each. 


THE  PARTRIDGE.  Natural  His- 
tory, by  the  Rev.  H.  A.  Macpherson  ; 
Shooting,  by  A.  J.  Stuart-Wortley  ; 
Cookery,  by  George  Saintsbury.  With 
II  Illustrations  and  various  Diagrams. 
Crown  8vo.,  55. 

THE  GROUSE.  Natural  History,  by 
the  Rev.  H.  A.  Macpherson;  Shooting, 
by  A.  J.  Stuart-Wortley;  Cookery,  by 
George  Saintsbury.  With  13  Illustrations 
and  various  Diagrams.     Crown  8vo.,  5s. 

THEPHEASANT.  Natural  History, 
by  the  Rev.  H.  A.  Macpherson  ;  Shooting, 
by  A.  J.  Stuart-Wortley  ;  Cookery,  by 
Alexander  Innes  Shand.  With  lo  Illus- 
trations and  various  Diagrams.  Crown 
8vo.,  55. 

THE  HARE.  Natural  History,  by 
the  Rev.  H.  A.  Macpherson  ;  Shooting, 
by  the  Hon.  Gerald  Lascelles  ;  Coursing, 
by  Charles  Richardson  ;  Hunting,  by  J. 
S.  Gibbons  and  G.  H.  Longman  ;  Cookery, 
by  Col.  Kenney  Herbert.  With  9 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  5s. 


RED  DEER.—^2X^xxq\  History,  by 
the  Rev.  H.  A.  Macpherson  ;  Deer  Stalk- 
ing, by  Cameron  of  Lochiel  ;  Stag 
Hunting,  by  Viscount  Ebrington  ; 
Cookery,  by  Alexander  Innes  Shand. 
With  10  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  55. 

THE  SALMON.    By  the  Hon.  A.  E. 

Gathorne-Hardy.  With  Chapters  on  the 
Law  of  Salmon  Fishing  by  Claud  Douglas 
Pennant;  Cookery,  by  Alexander  Innes 
Shand,     With  8  Illustrations.     Cr.  8vo.,  5s. 

THE  TROUT.  By  the  Marquess 
of  Granby.  With  Chapters  on  the  Breed- 
ing of  Trout  by  Col.  H.  Custance  ;  and 
Cookery,  by  Alexander  Innes  Shand. 
With  12  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo. ,  5s. 

THE  RABBIT.  By  James  Edmund 
Harting.  Cookery,  by  Alexander  Innes 
Shand.    With  10  Illustrations.    Cr.  8vo.,  55. 

PIKE  AND  PERCH.     By  William 

Senior  ('  Redspinner,'  Editor  of  the 
'  Field').  With  Chapters  by  John  Bicker- 
dyke  and  W.  H.  Pope  ;  Cookery,  by 
Alexander  Innes  Shand.  With  12  Il- 
lustrations.    Crown  8vo.,  5s. 


Alverstone   and  Alcock. — Surrey 

Cricket:    its    History    and    Associations.  1 
Edited  by  the   Right   Hon.   Lord   Alver-  i 
stone,  L.C.J.,  President,  and  C.W.  Alcock, 
Secretary,    of  the    Surrey    County    Cricket  j 
Club.    With  48  Illustrations.    8vo.,  165.  net.  | 

I 
Bickerdyke. — Days  of  My  Life  on  \ 
Water,   Fresh   and    Salt;    and   other 
Papers.       By    John    Bickerdyke.      With 
Photo-etching  Frontispiece  and  8  Full-page  [ 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6(/. 

Blackburne.  —  Mr.    Blackhurne  s  \ 

Games  at  Chess.  Selected,  Annotated 
and  Arranged  by  Himself.  Edited,  with  a 
Biographical  Sketch  and  a  brief  History  of 
Blindfold  Chess,  by  P.  Anderson  Graham. 
With  Portrait  of  Mr.  Blackburne.  8vo., 
75.  6d.  net. 

Dead  Shot  (The)  :  or.  Sportsman's 

Complete  Guide.  BeingaTreatiseon  the  Use 
of  the  Gun,  with  Rudimentary  and  Finishing 
Lessons  in  the  Art  of  Shooting  Game  of  all 
kinds.  Also  Game-driving,  Wildfowl  and 
Pigeon-shooting,  Dog-breaking,  etc.  By 
Marksman.  With  numerous  Illustrations 
Crown  8vo.,  los.  6c/. 


Ellis. — Chess  Sparks  ;  or,  Short  and 
Bright  Games  of  Chess.  Collected  and 
Arranged  by  J.  H.  Ellis,  M.A.    8vo.,  4s.  bd. 

Folkard. — The     Wild-Fowler  :    A 

Treatise  on  Fowling,  Ancient  and  Modern, 
descriptive  also  of  Decoys  and  Flight-ponds, 
Wild-fowl  Shooting,  Gunning-punts,  Shoot- 
ing-yachts, etc.  Also  Fowling  m  the  Fens 
and  in  Foreign  Countries,  Rock-fowling, 
etc.,  etc.,  by  H.  C.  Folkard.  With  13  En- 
gravings on  Steel,  and  several  Woodcuts. 
8vo.,  I2S.  bd. 

Ford. — The  Theory  and  Practice 
OF  Archery.  By  Horace  Ford.  New 
Edition,  thoroughly  Revised  and  Re-written 
by  W.  Butt,  M.A.  With  a  Preface  by  C, 
J.  Longman,  M.A.     8vo.,  145. 

Francis. — A  Book  on  Angling  :  or. 

Treatise  on  the  Art  of  Fishing  in  every 
Branch  ;  including  full  Illustrated  List  of  Sal- 
mon Flies.  By  Francis  Francis.  With  Por- 
trait and  Coloured  Plates.    Crown  8vo.,  15s. 

Fremantle.  —  The  Book  of  the 
Rifle.  By  the  Hon.  T.  F.  Fremantle, 
V.D.,  Major,  ist  Bucks  V.R.C.  With  54 
Plates  and  107  Diagrams  in  the  Text.  8vo., 
I2J.  bd.  net. 


i6 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Sport  and  Pastime- 


-continued. 


Gathorne  -  Hardy.  —  Autumns  in 
Argyleshire  with  Rod  and  Gun.  By 
the  Hon.  A.  E.  Gathorne-Hardy.  With 
8  Illustrations  by  Archibald  Thorburn. 
8vo.,  6s.  net. 

Qx^kidSW.— Country  Pastimes  for 
Boys.  By  P.  Anderson  Graham.  With 
252  Illustrations  from  Drawings  and 
Photographs.      Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  3s.  net. 

Hutchinson. —  The  Book  of  Golf 
and  Golfers.  By  Horace  G.  Hutchin- 
son. With  Contributions  by  Miss  Amy 
Pascoe,  H.  H.  Hilton,  J.  H.  Taylor,  H 
J.  Whigham,  and  Messrs.  Sutton  &  Sons. 
With  71  Portraits  from  Photographs.  Large 
crown  8vo.,  gilt  top,  7s.  6c/.  net. 

Lang. — Angling  Sketches.  By 
Andrew  Lang.  With  20  Illustrations. 
Crown  Svo.,  3s.  6d. 

Lillie. — Croquet  up  to  Da  te.  Con- 
taining the  Ideas  and  Teachings  of  the 
Leading  Players  and  Champions.  By  Ar- 
thur Lillie.  With  Contributions  by 
Lieut. -Col.  the  Hon.  H.  Needham,  C.  D. 
LococK,  etc.  With  19  Illustrations  (15 
and  numerous  Diagrams.     Svo., 


Portraits) 
los.  ()d.  net. 


Locock. — Side  and  Screiv  :  being 
Notes  on  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  the 
Game  of  Billiards.  By  C.  D.  Locock. 
With  Diagrams.     Crown  8vo.,  5s.  net. 

Longman. — Chess  Openings.  By 
Frederick  W.  Longman.  Fcp.  8vo.,  25.  6d. 

Mackenzie. — Notes  for  Hunting 
Men.  By  Captain  Cortlandt  Gordon 
Mackenzie.     Crown  8vo.,  2s.  bd.  net. 

Madden. — The  Diary  of  Master 
William  Silence  :  a  Study  of  Shakespeare 
and  of  Elizabethan  Sport.  By  the  Right 
Hon.  D.  H.  Madden,  Vice-Chancellor  of  the 
University  of  Dublin.     8vo.,  gilt  top,  i6s. 

Maskelyne. — Sharps  and  Flats  :  a 
Complete  Revelation  of  the  Secrets  of 
Cheating  at  Games  of  Chance  and  Skill.  By 
John  Nevil  Maskelyne,  of  the  Egyptian 
Hall.  With  62  Illustrations.  Crown  8vo.,  6s. 

Millais  (John  Guille). 

The  Wild-Fowler  in  Scotland. 
With  a  Frontispiece  in  Photogravure  by 
Sir  J.  E.  Millais,  Bart.,  P.R.A.,  8  Photo- 
gravure Plates,  2  Coloured  Plates  and  50 
Illustrations  from  the  Author's  Drawings 
and  from  Photographs.  Royal  4to.,  gilt 
top,  305.  net. 


Millais  (John  Guille) — continued. 
The  Natural  History  of  the 
B  Ri  TiSH  S  urfa  cb  ■  Feeding  D  ucks. 
With  6  Photogravures  and  66  Plates  (41 
in  Colours)  from  Drawings  by  the  Author, 
Archibald  Thorburn,  and  from  Photo- 
graphs. Royal  4to., cloth, gilt  top, ^6  6s.net. 

Modern  Bridge.— By 'Slam'.  With 

a  Reprint  of  the  Laws  of  Bridge,  as  adopted 
by  the  Portland  and  Turf  Clubs.  i8mo., 
gilt  edges,  3s.  td.  net. 

Park. — The  Game  of  Golf.  By 
William  Park,  Jun.,  Champion  Golfer, 
1887-89.  With  17  Plates  and  26  Illustra- 
tions in  the  Text.     Crown  8vo.,  7s.  6d. 

Payne-Gallwey  (Sir  Ralph,  Bart.). 

The    Cross-Bow  :     Mediaeval    and 

Modern  ;  Military  and  Sporting  ;  its 
Construction,  History  and  Management, 
with  a  Treatise  on  the  Balista  and  Cata- 
pult of  the  Ancients.  With  220  Illustra- 
tions.    Royal  4to.,  £'i  3s.  net. 

Letters  to  Young  Shooters  (First 
Series).  On  the  Choice  and  use  of  a  Gun. 
With  41  Illustrations.    Crown  8vo.,  7s.  6rf. 

Letters  to  Yo  ung  Shoo ters{  Secon  d 
Series).  On  the  Production,  Preservation, 
and  Killing  of  Game.  With  Directions 
in  Shooting  Wood-Pigeons  and  Breaking- 
in  Retrievers.  With  Portrait  and  103 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  12s.  6d. 

Letters  to  Young  Shooters. 
(Third  Series.)  Comprising  a  Short 
Natural  History  of  the  Wildfowl  that 
are  Rare  or  Common  to  the  British 
Islands,  with  complete  directions  in 
Shooting  Wildfowl  on  the  Coast  and 
Inland.  With  200  Illustrations.  Crown 
8vo.,  1 8s. 
Pole. — The  Theory  of  the  Modern 

Scientific  Game  of  Whist.   By  William 

Pole,  F.R.S.     Fcp.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  2s.  net. 

Proctor. — How  to  Flay  Whist: 
with  the  Laws  and  Etiquette  of 
Whist.  By  Richard  A.  Proctor.  Crown 
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Ronalds. — 2 he  Fly-Fisher  s  Ento- 
mology. By  Alfred  Ronalds.  With  20 
coloured  Plates.    8vo.,  14s. 

Selous. — Sport  and  Travel,  East 
and  West.  By  Frederick  Courteney 
Selous.  With  18  Plates  and  35  Illustra- 
tions in  the  Text.    Medium  8vo.,  12s.  6d.  net. 

Warner. — CricketinA  ustralasia  : 

being  Record  of  the  Tour  of  the  English 
Team,  1902-3.  By  Pelham  F.  Warner. 
With  numerous  Illustrations  from  Photo- 
graphs.    Crown  Svo. 


Messrs.  longmans  &  co.'s  standard  and  GENfiftAL  woRi<s.      ij 


Mental,  Moral,  and  Political  Philosophy. 

LOGIC,  RHETORIC,  PSYCHOLOGY,  &'C. 


Abbott. — The  Elements  of  Logic. 
By  T.  K.  Abbott,  B.D.     i2mo.,  3s. 

Aristotle. 

The  Ethics:  Greek  Text,  Illustrated 
with  Essay  and  Notes.  By  Sir  Alexan- 
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An  Introduction  to  Aristotle^s 
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Bacon  (Francis). 

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Ellis,  James  Spedding  and  D.  D. 
Heath.     7  vols.     8vo.,  £1  135.  bd. 

Letters  and  Life.,  including  all  his 
occasional  Works.  Edited  by  James 
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The  Essays:  with  Annotations.  Bv 
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The  Essays:  with  Notes.  By  F. 
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Brooks. — The  Elements  of  Mind  : 

being  an  Examination  into  the  Nature  of 
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History  of  Intellectual  Z?v5-k^z- 
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tion, Explained  and  Applied.  By  William 
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Lectures  on  the  Principles  of 
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Gurnhill. — The  Morals  of  Suicide. 

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t8        MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Mental,  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy — continued. 

LOGIC,    RHETORIC,    PSYCHOLOGY,    (S-C. 


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Essay.     8vo.,  165. 
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The  Philosophy  of  Reflection. 

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separately,  Essays.  2  vols.  14X.  Treatise 
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James  (William,  M.D.,  LL.D.). 

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Kant  (Immanuel). 

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net.  Vol.  II.  Collectivism  and  Individualism. 

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Max  Miiller  (F.). 

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OF   Phil  osoph  }  • 

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Max  Muller  (The  Right  Hon.  P.). 
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lated by  Oscar  A.  Fechter,  Mayor  of 
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22       MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


The  Science  of  Religion,  &c. — continued. 


Max  Muller  (The  Right  Hon.  F.)— 

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iEschylus. — EuMENiDES  of  ^schy- 

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Becker  (W.  A.),  Translated  by  the 
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terature. By  the  Rev.  Lewis  Campbell, 
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wherem  is  told  somewhat  of  the  Lives  of 
the  Men  of  Burgdale,  their  F"riends,  their 
Neighbours,  their  Foemen,  and  their 
Fellows-in-Arms.  Written  in  Prose  and 
Verse.     Square  crown  Svo.,  8s. 


28        MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Fiction,    Humour,   &e. — continued. 

Morris  (William) — continued. 


A  Tale  of  the  House  of  the 
WOLFINGS,  and  all  the  Kindreds  of  the 
Mark.  Written  in  Prose  and  Verse. 
Square  crown  8vo.,  6s. 

A  Dream  of  John  Ball,  and  a 
King's  Lesson.     i6mo.,  25.  net. 

News  from  Nowhere;  or,  An 
Epoch  of  Rest.  Being  some  Chapters 
from  an  Utopian  Romance.  Post  8vo., 
IS.  bd. 

The  Stor  y  of  Gre ttir  the  Strong. 
Translated  from  the  Icelandic  by  Eirikr 
Magnusson  and  William  Morris.  Cr. 
8vo.,  5s.  net. 

Three  Northern  Love  Stories, 
AND  Other  Tales.  Translated  from  the 
Icelandic  by  Eirikr  Magnusson  and 
William  Morris.     Crown  8vo.,  6s.  net. 

*,*  For    Mr.    William    Morris's   other 
Works,  see  pp.  24,  37  and  40. 


Newman  (Cardinal). 
Loss  AND  Gain  :    The    Story  of  a 

Convert.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6(f. 


Sheehan.  —  Luke    Delmege.      By 

the  Rev.  P.  A.  Sheehan,  P.P.,  Author  of 
'  My  New  Curate  '.     Crown  8vo.,  6s. 


Somerville 

(Martin). 


(E.    (E.)    and    Ross 


Some  Experiences    of  an  Irish 

R.M.      With  31    Illustrations  by  E.   CE. 
Somerville.     Crown  8vo.,  6s. 

All  on  the  Irish  Shore  :    Irish 

Sketches.     With  Illustrations  by  E.   CE. 
Somerville.     Crown  8vo.,  6s. 


The    Real 
8vo.,  3s.  bd. 


Charlotte.       Crown 


The  Silver  Fox.     Cr.  8vo.,  3.S-.  bd. 


Stebbing. — Rachel  Wulfstan,  and 
other  Stories.  By  W.  Stebbing,  author  of 
'  Probable  Tales '.     Crown  8vo.,  4s.  6^. 


Callista  :    A    Tale   of  the   Third  ,  Stevenson  (Robert  Louis). 
Century.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6d. 


Phillipps-Wolley. — Snap:  a  Legend 

of  the  Lone  Mountain.  By  C.  Phillipps- 
Wolley.  With  13  Illustrations.  Crown 
8vo. ,  3s.  6d. 


Portman. — Sta  tion  Studies  :  being 
the  Jottings  of  an  African  Official.  By 
Lionel  Portman.     Crown  8vo.,  5s.  net. 


Sewell  (Elizabeth  M.). 


A  Glimpse  of  the  World, 
Laneton  Parsonage. 
Margaret  Percival. 
Katharine  Ashton. 
The  Earl's  Daughter. 
The  Experience  of  Life. 


Amy  Herbert. 
Cleve  Hall. 
Gertrude. 
Home  Life. 
After  Life. 
Ursula.     Ivors. 


Cr.  8vo.,  cloth  plain,  is.  6d.  each. 
extra,  gilt  edges,  2s.  6d.  each. 


Cloth 


The  Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde.  Fcp.  8vo.,  is.  sewed. 
IS.  6d.  cloth. 


The  Strange  Case  of  Dr. 
Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde;  with  other 
Fables.  Crown  8vo.,  bound  in  buckram, 
with  gilt  top,  5s.  net. 

'  Silver  Library  '  Edition.    Crown  8vo., 
3s.  6d. 


More  New  Arabian  Nights — The 
Dynamiter.  By  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son and  Fanny  van  de  Grift  Steven- 
son.    Crown  8vo.,  3s.  td. 


The  Wrong  Box.  By  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  and  Lloyd  Osbourne. 
Crown  8vo.,  3s.  td. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS.        29 


Fiction,  Humour,  &e. — continued. 


Suttner. — Lay  Down    Your   ^/?ii/5    Walford  (L.  B.) — continued 
(Die  Waffen  Nieder) :  The  Autobiography 
of  Martha  von  Tilling.     By  Bertha  von 
Suttner.      Translated  by  T.    Holmes. 
Cr.  8vo.,  IS.  td. 


Trollope  (Anthony). 
The  Warden.     Cr.  8vo.,  15.  6(/. 
Barchester  Towers.  Cr.8vo.,i5.6^. 

Walford  (L.  B.). 

Stay- AT- Homes.     Crown  8vo.,  6s. 

Charlotte.     Crown  Svo.,  65. 

One  of  Ourselves.     Cr,  8vo.,  65. 

The  Intruders.  Crown  8vo.,  25. 6^. 

Leddy  Marget.   Crown  8vo. ,  25. 6^. 

IvA  KiLDARE :  a  Matrimonial  Pro- 
blem.    Crown  8vo.,  as.  6d. 

Mr.    Smith:   a    Part   of  his    Life. 
Crown  8vo.,  2s.  6d. 

The  Baby's    Grandmother.     Cr. 
8vo.,  2S.  6rf. 

Cousins.     Crown  Svo.,  25.  6d. 

Troublesome    Daughters.        Cr. 
Svo.,  2i.  6d. 

Pauline.     Crown  8vo.,  25.  6d. 

Dick  Nether  by.     Cr.  8vo.,  25.  6d. 

The  History  of  a    Week.      Cr. 
8vo.  2s.  6rf. 

A  Stiff-necked  Generation.     Cr. 

8vo.  25.  6rf. 

Nan,  and  other  Stories.     Cr.  8vo., 

25.  td. 


The  Mischief  of  Monica. 
Svo.,  25.  6rf. 


Cr. 


The  One  Good  Guest.     Cr.  Svo. 

25.  6d. 

'  Ploughed,'     and     other     Stories. 
Crown  8vo.,  25.  6d. 

The  Ma  tchma ker.    Cr.  Svo. ,  25.  bd. 


Ward. — One    Poor    Scruple.      By- 
Mrs.  Wilfrid  Ward.     Crown  Svo.,  6s. 


Weyman  (Stanley). 

The  House  of  the  Wolf.  With 
Frontispiece  and  Vignette.  Crown  Svo., 
3s.  td. 

A  Gentleman  of  France.  With 
Frontispiece  and  Vignette.     Cr.  8vo.,  65. 

The  Red  Cockade.  With  Frontis- 
piece and  Vignette.     Crown  Svo.,  6s. 

Shrewsbury.  With  24  Illustra- 
tions by  Claude  A.  Shepperson.  Cr. 
8vo.,  6s. 

Sophia.  With  Frontispiece.  Crown 
Svo.,  6s. 


Yeats  (S.  Levett). 

The  Chevalier  DAvriac.   Crown 

Svo.,  3s.  6rf. 

The  Traitor's  Way.     Cr.  8vo.,  6.";. 


Yoxall. —  The  Rommany  Stone.    B>- 

J.  H.  Yoxall,  M.P.     Crown  Svo.,  65. 


30        MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Popular  Science  (Natural  History,  &e.). 


Butler. — Our  Household  Insects.    Hudson  (W.  H.) 
An  Account  of  the  Insect-Pests  found  in 
Dwelling- Houses.    By  Edward  A.  Butler, 
B.A.,    B.Sc.    (Lond.).      With  113    Illustra- 
tions.    Crown  8vo.,  35.  bd. 


Hampshire  Days.      With  numer- 
ous    Illustrations     from     Drawings     by 


Bryan  Hook,  etc.     8vo.,  105.  6rf.  net. 


Furneaux  (W.). 


The  Outdoor  World;  or  The 
Young  Collector's  Handbook.  With  18 
Plates  (16  of  which  are  coloured),  and  549 
Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo., 
gilt  edges,  6s.  net. 


Butterflies  and  Moths  (British). 
With  12  coloured  Plates  and  241  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  gilt 
edges,  65.  net. 


Life  in  Ponds  and  Streams. 
With  8  coloured  Plates  and  331  Illustra- 
tions in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  gilt 
edges,  6s.  net. 


Hartwig  (George). 


The  Sea  and  its  Living  Wonders. 
With  12  Plates  and  303  Woodcuts.  8vo., 
gilt  top,  75.  net. 

The  Tropical  World,  With  8 
Plates  and  172  Woodcuts.  8vo.,  gilt 
top,  7s.  net. 

The  Polar  World.  With  3  Maps, 
8  Plates  and  85  Woodcuts.  8vo.,  gilt 
top,  7s.  net. 

The  Subterranean  World.  With 
3  Maps  and  80  Woodcuts.  8vo.,  gilt 
top,  7s.  net. 


Helmholtz. — Popular  Lectures  on 
Scientific  Subjects.  By  Hermann  von 
Helmholtz.  With  68  Woodcuts.  2  vols. 
Cr.  Svo.,  3s.  &d.  each. 


Birds  and  Man. 

8vo.,  6s.  net. 


Large 


crown 


Nature  in  Downland.  With  12 
Plates  and  14  Illustrations  in  the  Text  by 
A.  D.  McCoRMiCK.     8vo.,  los.  bd.  net. 

British  Birds.  With  a  Chapter 
on  Structure  and  Classification  by  Frank 
E.  Beddard,  F.R.S.  With  16  Plates  (8 
of  which  are  Coloured),  and  over  100  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo.,  gilt 
edges,  6s.  net. 


Millais. — The  Natural  History  of 
the  British  Surface  Feeding-Ducks. 
By  John  Guille  Millais,  F.Z.S.,  etc. 
With  6  Photogravures  and  66  Plates  (41  in 
Colours)  from  Drawings  by  the  Author, 
Archibald  Thorburn,  and  from  Photo- 
graphs.    Royal  4to.,  £6  6s. 


Proctor  (Richard  A.). 

Light  Science  for  Leisure  Hours. 
Familiar  Essays  on  Scientific  Subjects. 
Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6(f. 


Rough  Ways  made  Smooth. 
liar  Essays  on  Scientific  Subjects. 
8vo.,  3s.  6d. 

Pleasant  Ways  in  Science. 
8vo.,  3s.  6(f. 


Fami- 
Crown 


Crown 


Na  ture  Studies.  By  R.  A.  Proc- 
tor, Grant  Allen,  A.  Wilson,  T. 
Foster  and  E.  Clodd.     Cr.  8vo.,  3s.  ^d. 

Leisure  Readings.  By  R.  A.  Proc- 
tor, E.  Clodd,  A.  Wilson,  T.  Foster 
and  A.  C.  Ranyard.     Cr.  8vo. ,  3s.  6rf. 

*  *  For  Mr.  Proctor's  other  books  see  pp.  16 
and  35,  and  Messrs.  Longmans  &•  Co.'s  Cata- 
logue of  Scientific  Works. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS.         31 


Popular    Science    (Natural  History,  &e.) — continued. 


Stanley.—^   Familiar   History  op  >  Wood  (Rev.  J.  G.) — continued. 
Birds.      By  E.  Stanley,    D.D.,  formerly  ' 
Bishop  of  Norwich.    With  160  Illustrations. 
Cr.  8vo.,  35.  6d. 


Wood  (Rev.  J.  G.). 

Homes  without  Hands:  A  Descrip- 
tion of  the  Habitations  of  Animals,  classed 
according  to  their  Principle  of  Construc- 
tion. With  140  Illustrations.  8vo.,  gilt 
top,  75.  net. 

Insects  a  t  Home  :  A  Popular  Ac- 
count of  British  Insects,  their  Structure, 
Habits  and  Transformations.  With  700 
Illustrations.     8vo.,  gilt  top,  7s.  net. 


Insects  Abroad  :  A  Popular  Ac- 
count of  Foreign  Insects,  their  Structure, 
Habits  and  Transformations.  With  600 
Illustrations.     8vo.,  js.  net. 


Out  of 
Original 
History. 
3s.  6rf. 


Doors;  a  Selection  of 
Articles  on  Practical  Natural 
With  II  Illustrations.    Cr.  Svo., 


Petland  Revisited.  With  33 
Illustrations.     Cr.  Svo.,  3s.  6rf. 

Strange  Dwellings:  a  Description 
of  the  Habitations  of  Animals,  abridged 
from  '  Homes  without  Hands'.  With  60 
Illustrations.     Cr.  8vo.,  3s.  6<f. 


Works  of  Reference. 


Gwilt. — An  Encyclopedia  of  Ar- 
chitecture. By  Joseph  Gwilt,  F.S.A. 
With  1700  Engravings.  Revised  (1888), 
with  Alterations  and  Considerable  Addi- 
tions by  WvATT  Papworth.  8vo.,  21s. 
net. 


Longmans'  Gazetteer  of  the 
World.  Edited  by  George  G.  Chis- 
HOLM,  M.A.,  B.Sc.  Imperial  8vo.,  185.  net 
cloth  ;  215.  half-morocco. 


Maunder  (Samuel). 

Biographical  Treasury.  With 
Supplement  brought  down  to  i88g.  By 
Rev.  James  Woop.     Fcp.  8vo.,  65. 


The  Treasury  of  Bible  Know- 
ledge. By  the  Rev.  J.  Ayre,  M.A.  With 
5  Maps,  15  Plates,  and  300  Woodcuts. 
Fcp.    8vo.,   65. 


Treasury  of  Knowledge  and  Lib- 
rary OF  Reference.     Fcp.  8vo..  6s. 


Maunder  (Samuel; — continued. 


The  Treasury  of  Botany.  Edited 
by  J.  Lindley,  F.R.S.,  and  T.  Moore, 
F.L.S.  With  274  Woodcuts  and  20  Steel 
Plates.     2  vols.     Fcp.  8vo.,  125. 


Roget.  —  Thesaurus  of  English 
Words  a.\d  Phrases.  Classified  and  Ar- 
ranged so  as  to  Facilitate  the  Expression  of 
Ideas  and  assist  in  Literarj'  Composition. 
By  Peter  Mark  Roget,  M.D.,  F.R.S. 
Recomposed  throughout,  enlarged  and  im- 
proved, partly  from  the  Author's  Notes,  and 
with  a  full  Index,  by  the  Author's  Son, 
John  Lewis  Roget.     Crown  8vo.,  gs.  net. 


'WiWic.h.-- Popular  Tables  forgiving 

information  for  ascertaining  the  value  of 
Lifehold,  Leasehold,  and  Church  Property, 
the  Public  Funds,  etc.  By  Charles  M. 
WiLLicH.  Edited  by  H.  Bence  Jones. 
Crown  8vo.,   los.  6<f. 


32        MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Children's  Books. 


Adelborg. — Clean  Peter  and  the 
Children  of  Grubbylea.  By  Ottilia 
Adelborg.  Translated  from  the  Swedish 
by  Mrs.  Graham  Wallas.  With  23 
Coloured  Plates.  Oblong  4to.,  boards, 
3s,  6d.  net. 


Alick's    Adventures- —  By    G.    R. 

With   8    Illustrations   by   John    Hassall. 
Crown  8vo.,  35.  &d. 


Brown. — The  Book  of  Saints  and 
Friendly  Beasts.  By  Abbie  Farwell 
Brown.  With  8  Illustrations  by  Fanny  Y. 
Cory.     Crown  8vo.,  45.  dd.  net. 


Buckland. — JwoLittleRuna  wa  ys. 

Adapted  from  the  French  of  Louis  Des- 
NOYERS.  By  James  Buckland.  With  no 
Illustrations  by  Cecil  Aldin.    Cr.  8vo.,  6s. 

Crake  (Rev.  A.  D.). 

Edwy  the  Fair;  or,  The  First 
Chronicle  of  .(Escendune.  Cr.  Svo. ,  silver 
top,  25.  net. 

Alegar  the  Dane  ;  or,  The  Second 
Chronicle  of  yEscendune.  Cr.  8vo.,  silver 
top,  25.  net. 

The  Rival  Heirs  :  being  the  Third 
and  Last  Chronicle  of  yEscendune.  Cr. 
8vo.,  silver  top,  25.  net. 

The  House  OR  Walderne.  A  Tale 
of  the  Cloister  and  the  Forest  in  the  Days 
of  the  Barons'  Wars.  Crown  8vo.,  silver 
top,  25.  net. 

Brian  Fitz- Count.  A  Story  of 
Wallingford  Castle  and  Dorchester 
Abbey.     Cr.  8vo.,   silver  top,  25.  net. 


Henty  (G.  A.). — Edited  by. 

Yule  Logs  :  A  Story-Book  for  Boys. 
By  Various  Authors.  With  61  Illus- 
trations.    Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  3s.  net. 

Yule  Tide  Yarns:  a  Story-Book 
for  Boys.  By  Various  Authors.  With 
45  Illustrations.  Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  35. 
net. 


Lang  (Andrew). — Edited  by. 

The  Bl  ue  Fa ir y  Book.  With  138 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

ThE  Red  Fairy  Book.  With  100 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Green  Fa  ir  y  Book.  With  99 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Grey  Fairy  Book.     With  65 

Illustrations.      Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Yellow  Fairy  Book.  With 
104  Illustrations.    Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Pink  Fairy  Book.  With  67 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Violet  Fairy  Book.  With  8 
Coloured  Plates  and  54  other  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Bl  ue  Poetr  y  Book.  With  1 00 
Illustrations.  Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  True  Story  Book.  With  66 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Red  True  Story  Book.  With 
100  Illustrations.     Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Animal  Story  Book.  With 
67  Illustrations.      Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Red  Book  of  Animal  Stories. 

With  65   Illustrations.     Crown   8vo.,  gilt 
edges,  65. 

The  Arabian  Alights  Entertain- 
ments. With  66  Illustrations.  Cr.  8vo., 
gilt  edges,  65. 

The  Book  of  Romance.  With  8 
Coloured  Plates  and  44  other  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  65. 


Lyall. — The  B urges  Letters  :  a 
Record  of  Child  Life  in  the  Sixties.  By 
Edna  Lyall.  With  Coloured  Frontispiece 
and  8  other  Full-page  Illustrations  by 
Walter  S.  Stacey.     Crown  8vo.,  25.  td. 


Meade  (L.  T.). 

Daddy'^s  Boy.    With  8  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  35.  net. 

Deb  and   the  Duchess.     With  7 
Illustrations.    Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  3s.  net. 

The  Beresford  Prize.      With  7 

Illustrations.     Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  35.  net. 

The  House  of  Surprises.    With  6 
Illustrations.     Cr.  8vo.,  gilt  edges,  35.  net. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS.        33 


Children's  Books — continued. 


Murray.  —  Flower  Legends  for 
Children.  By  Hilda  Murray  (the  Hon. 
Mrs.  Murray  of  Elibank).  Pictured  by  J. 
S.  Eland.  With  numerous  Colours'!  and 
other  Illustrations.     Oblong  410.,  6s. 

Penrose.  —  Chubby  :   a^^Nuisance. 

By   Mrs.   Penrose.     With    8,  Illustrations 
by  G.  G.  Manton.     Crown  8vo.,  35.  bd. 

Praeger  (Rosamond). 

The  Adventures  of  Thh  Three 
Bold  Babes  :  Hector,  Honoria  and 
Alisander.  a  Story  in  Pictures.  With 
24  Coloured  Plates  and  24  Outline  Pic- 
tures.    Oblong  4to.,  3s.  6^. 

The  Further  Doings  of  the  Three 
Bold  Babes.  With  24  Coloured  Pictures 
and  24  Outline  Pictures.  Oblong  4to.,35.6rf. 

Roberts.  —  The  Adventures  of 
Captain  John  Smith  :  Captain  of  Two 
Hundred  and  Fifty  Horse,  and  sometime 
President  of  Virginia.  By  E.  P.  Roberts. 
With  17  Illustrations  and  3  Maps.  Crown 
8vo.,  5s.  net. 

Stevenson. — A  Child's  Garden  of 
Verses.  By  Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 
Fcp.  8vo.,  gilt  top,  5s. 

Tappan. —  Old  Ballads  in  Prose. 
By  Eva  March  Tappan.  With  4  Illus- 
trations by  Fanny  Y.  Cory.  Crown  8vo., 
giU  top,  4s.  bd.  net. 


Upton  (Florence  K.  and  Bertha). 

The  Adventures  of  Two  Dutch 
Dolls  and  a  '  Golliwogg\  With  31 
Coloured  Plates  and  numerous  Illustra- 
tions in  the  Text.     Oblong  4to.,  65. 

The  Golliwogg's  Bicycle  Club. 
With  31  Coloured  Plates  and  numerous 
Illustrations  in  the  Text.    Oblong  410.,  65. 

The  Golliwogg  at  the  Seaside. 
With  31  Coloured  Plates  and  numerous 
Illustrations  in  the  Text.     Oblong  4to. ,  65. 

The  Golliwogg  in  ]Var.  With  31 
Coloured  Plates.     Oblong  4to.,  6s. 

The  Golliwogg's  Polar  Adven- 
tures. With  31  Coloured  Plates.  Ob- 
long 4to.,  6s. 

The    Golliwogg's    Auto-go-cart. 

With  31   Coloured  Plates  and  numerous 
Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Oblong  4to.,  6j. 

The  Golliwogg's  Air-Ship.    With 

30  Coloured  Pictures  and  numerous  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.     Oblong  4to.,  6s. 

The  Vege-Men's  Revenge.     With 

31  Coloured  Plates  and  numerous  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.     Oblong  4to.,  6s. 

Wemyss. — '  Things  We  Thought 
of  ' :  Told  from  a  Child's  Point  of  View. 
By  Mary  C.  E.  Wemyss,  Author  of  'All 
About  All  of  Us  '.  With  8  Illustrations  in 
Colour  by  S.  R.  Praeger.  Crown  8vo., 
3s.  td. 


The  Silver  Library. 

Crown  Svo.     3s.  bd.  each  Volume. 


Arnold's  (Sir   Edwin)  Seas  and  Lands.     With 
71  Illustrations.     35.  6d. 

Bagehot's  (W.)  Biographical  Studies.     3.?.  dd. 

Bagehot's  (W.)  Economic  Studies.     3^.  612'. 

Bagehot's  (W.)  Literary  Studies.  With  Portrait. 

3  vols. ,  3.f .  6(/.  each. 

Balfer'8  (Sir   S.   W.)  Eight   Years  in   Ceylon. 

With  6  Illustrations.     35.  bd. 

Baker's  (Sir  S.  W.)  Rifle  and  Hound  in  Ceylon. 

With  6  Illustr.itions.     3^.  dd. 

Baring-Gould's  (Rev.  S.)  Curious  Myitis  of  the 
Middle  Ages.     35.  bd. 

Baring-Gould's  (Rev.  S.)  Origin  and  Develop- 
ment of  Religious  Belief.    2  vols.    3J.  6</.  each. 

Becl<er's  ( W.  A.)  Callus :  or,  Roman  Scenes  in  the 
Time  of  Augustu-..     With  26  lUus.     y.  bd. 


Becker's  (W.  A.)  Charicles:  or.  Illustrations  of 
the  Private  Life  of  the  .4.ncient  Greeks. 
With  26  Illustrations.     3.C.  bd. 

Bent's  (J.  T.)  The  Ruined  Cities  of  Mashona- 

land.     With  1 17  Illustrations,     y.bd. 

Brassey's  (Lady)  A  Voyage  in  the  '  Sunbeam  '. 

With  66  Illustrations.     3^.  bd. 

Buckle's  (H.  T.)  History  of  Civilisation  in 
England.      3  vols.      ioa.  bd. 

Churchili's  (Winston  S.)  The  Story  of  the 
Malakand  Field  Force,  1897.  With  6  Maps 
and  Flans.     3.«.  bd. 

Clodd's  (E.)  Story  of  Creation:  a  Plain  Account 
of  Evolution.     With  77  Illustrations,    y.bd. 

Conybeare  (Rev.  W.  J.)  and  Howson's  (Very 
Rev.  J.   S.)  Life  and  Epistles  of   St.  Paul. 

With  46  Illustrations.     3^.  bd. 
Dougall's  (L.)  Beggars  All :  a  Novel,     y.  bd. 
Doyle's  (Sir  A.  Conan)  Micah  Clarke.    A  Tale  of 

Monmoutn's  Rebellion.  With  10  lUusts.  y.6d. 


34 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


The  Silver  Library — continued. 


Doyle's  (Sir  A.  Conan)  The  Captain  of  the 
Polestar,  and  other  Tales.     35.  6d. 

Doyle's  (Sir  A.  Conan)  The  Refugees :  A  Tale  of 
the  Huguenots.    With  25  Illustrations.    356a?. 

Doyle's  (Sir  A.  Conan)  The  Stark  Munro  Letters. 

3:r.  td. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  The  History  of  England,  from 
the  Fall  of  Wolsey  to  the  Defeat  of  the 
Spanish  Armada.     12  vols.     3^'.  bd.  each. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  The  English  in  Ireland.  3  vols. 
\os.  6d. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  The  Divorce  of  Catherine  of 
Aragon.     3^.  6d. 

Froude's   (J.   A.)   The   Spanish   Story   of   the 

Armada,  and  other  Essays.     3^.  6d. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  English  Seamen  in  the  Sixteenth 
Century.     35.  6d. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  Short  Studies  on  Great  Sub- 
jects.    4  vols.     35.  6d.  each. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  Oceana,  or  England  and  Her 
Colonies.     With  9  Illustrations.     3^.  6d. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  The  Council  of  Trent,    y.  6d. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  The  Life  and  Letters  of 
Erasmus.     35.  6d. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  Thomas  Carlyle :  a  History  of 
his   Life. 
1795-1835.  2  vols.  7s.     1834-1881.   2  vols.  ys. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  Caesar :  a  Sketch,     y.  6d. 

Froude's  (J.  A.)  The  Two  Chiefs  of  Dunboy :  an 

Irish  Romance  of  the  Last  Century.     3^.  bd. 

Froude's   (J.    A.)    Writings,    Selections    from. 

y.  6d. 

Glelg's  (Rev.  G.  R.)  Life  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington.     With  Portrait.     35.  6d. 

Greville's  (C.  C.  F.)  Journal  of  the  Reigns  of 
King  George  lY.,  King  William  lY.,  and 
Queen  Yictoria.     8  vols. ,  y.  6d.  each. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  She :  A  History  of  Adventure. 

With  32  Illustrations,     y.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Allan  Quatermain.  With 
20  Illustrations,     y.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Colonel  Quaritch,  V.C.  :  a 
Tale  of  Country  Life.  With  Frontispiece 
and  Vignette,      y.   6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)jCleopatra.  With  29  Illustra- 
tions.    3^-.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Eric  Brighteyes.  With  51 
Illustrations.      3^.   6d. 


Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Beatrice.     With  Frontispiece 

and  Vignette.     35.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Black  Heart  and  White  Heart. 

With  33  Illustrations.     3.?.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Allan's  Wife.  With  34  Illus- 
trations.    3^.  6d. 

Haggard  (H.  R.)  Heart  of  the  World.     With 

15  Illustrations.     35.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Montezuma's  Daughter.  With 
25  Illustrations.     35.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Swallow :  a  Tale  of  the  Great 
Trek.     With  8  Illustrations.     3^.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  The  Witch's  Head.  With 
16  Illustrations,     y.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Mr.  Meeson's  Will.    With 

16  Illustrations.     35.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Nada  the  Lily.  With  23 
Illustrations.     y.6d. 

Haggard's  (H.R.)  Dawn.  With  i6Illusts.  3s.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  The  People  of  the  Mist.  With 
16  Illustrations.     3^.  6d. 

Haggard's  (H.  R.)  Joan  Haste.  With  20  Illus- 
trations.    2s.  6d. 

Haggard  (H.  R.)  and  Lang's  (A.)  The  World's 
Desire.     With  27  Illustrations,     y.  6d. 

Harte's  (Bret)  In  the  Carquinez  Woods  and 
other  Stories.     3i^.  6d. 

Helmholtz's  (Hermann  von)  Popular  Lectures 
on  Scientific  Subjects.  With  68  Illustrations. 
2  vols.     3s.  6d.  each. 

Hope's  (Anthony)  The  Heart  of  Princess  Osra. 

With  9  Illustrations.      3^.  6d. 

Hewitt's  (W.)  Yisits  to   Remarkable   Places. 

With  80  Illustrations.     35.  6d. 

Jefferies'   (R.)   The   Story  of  My  Heart:    My 

Autobiography.     With  Portrait.     35.  6d. 

Jefferies'  (R.)  Field  and  Hedgerow.  With 
Portrait,     y.  6d. 

Jefferies' (R.)  Red  Deer.  With  17  lUusts.   y.  bd. 

Jefferies'  (R.)  Wood  Magic:  a  Fable.  With 
Frontispiece  and  Vignette  by  E.  V.  B.     35.  6d. 

Jefferies  (R.)  The  Toilers  of  the  Field.  With 
Portrait  from  the  Bust  in  Salisbury  Cathedral. 
3s.  6d. 

Kaye  (Sir  J.)  and  Malleson's  (Colonel)  History 
of  the  Indian  Mutiny  of  1857-8.  6  vols. 
3.?.  6d.  each. 

Knight's  (E.  F.)  The  Cruise  of  the    'Alerte': 

the  Narrative  of  a  Search  for  Treasure  on 
the  Desert  Island  of  Trinidad.  With  2 
Maps  and  23  Illustrations,     y.  6d. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


35 


The  Silver  Library — continued. 


Knight's  (E.  F.)  Where  Three  Empires  Meet:  a 

Narrative  of  Recent  Travel  in  Kashmir, 
Western  Tibet,  Baltistan,  Gilgit.  With  a  Map 
and  54  Illustrations.     3^-.  6d. 

Knight's  (E.  F.)  The  'Falcon'  on  the  Baltic:  a 
Coasting  Voyage  from  Hammersmith  to 
Copenhagen  in  a  Three-Ton  Yacht.  With 
Map  and  11  Illustrations.     3^-.  bd. 

Kostlin's  (J.)  Life  of  Luther.  With  62  Illustra- 
tions and  4  Facsimiles  of  MSS.     3^.  6d. 


Lang's  (A.)  Angling  Slietches. 

tions.     y.  6d. 


With  20  lUustra- 


Lang's  (A.)  Custom  and  Myth :  Studies  of  Early 
Usage  and  Belief,     y.  6d.  1 

Lang's(A.)Cocl{Laneancl Common-Sense.  3^.  6d. 

Lang's  (A.)  The  Book  of  Dreams  and  Ghosts, 

y.  6d.  i 

Lang's  (A,)  A  Monli  of  Fife :  a  Story  of  the 
Days  of  Joan  of  Arc.  With  13  Illustrations. 
3^.  6d. 

Lang's(A.)Myth,Ritual,  and  Religion.  2  vols.  7V.  i 

Lees  (J.  A.)  and  Clutterbucli's  (W.  J.)  B.C. 
1887,  A  Ramble  in  British  Columbia.     With 

Maps  and  75  Illustrations,     y.  6d 

Levett-Veats'    (S.)    The    Chevalier    D'Auriac.  ^ 
3^.  6rf.  j 

Macaulay's  (Lord)  Complete  Works.  '  Albany  ' 
Edition.  Willi  12  Portraits.  12  vols.  3^.  6d. 
each. 

Macaulay's  (Lord)  Essays  and  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome,  etc.  With  Portrait  and  4  Illustrations 
to  the  '  Lays '.      y.  6d. 

Hacleod's  (H.  D.)  Elements  of  Banking.    3.^.  6d. 

Marshman's  (J.  C.)  Memoirs  of  Sir  Henry 
Havelock.     35.  6d. 

Mason  (A.  E.  W.)  and  Lang's  (A.)  Parson  Kelly. 
y.  6d. 

Merivale's  (Dean)  History  of  the  Romans 
under  the  Empire.     8  vols.     y.  6d.  each. 


Herriman's  (H.  S.     Flotsam  : 

Indian  Mutiny,     y.  6d. 


A  Tale  of  the 


Mill's  (J.  S.)  Political  Economy.     3J.  6d. 

Mill's  (J.  8.)  System  of  Logic.     35.  6d. 

Hilner's  (Geo.)  Country  Pleasures  :  the  Chroni- 
cle of  a  Year  chiefly  in  a  Garden.     3.!-.  6d. 

Hansen's  (F.)  The  First  Crossing  of  Greenland. 
With  142  Illustrations  and  a  Map.     35.  6d. 

PhlUipps-Wolley's  (C.)  Snap  :  a  Legend  of  the 
Lone  Mountain    With  13  Illustrations.  y.6d. 


Proctor's  (R.  A.)  The  Orbs  Around  Us.      y.  6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  The  Expanse  of  Heaven.  3.!.  6d. 

Proctor's   (R.  A.)   Light    Science    for  Leisure 
Hours.     3.(.  6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  The  Moon.     3,1'  6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  Other  Worlds  than  Ours.  y.6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  Our  Place  among  Infinities  : 

a  Series  of  Essays  contrasting  our  Little 
Abode  in  Space  and  Time  with  the  Infinities 
around  us.     y.  6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  Other  Suns  than  Ours.  35.  6d. 

Proctor's  (R,  A.)  Rough  Ways  made  Smooth. 

Ss.  6d. 

Proctor's(R.A.)PleasantWays  in  Science.  y.6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  Myths  and  Marvels  of  As- 
tronomy.    3i.  6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  Nature  Studies.     3^.  6d. 

Proctor's  (R.  A.)  Leisure  Readings.     By  R.  A. 

Proctor,  Edward  Clodd,  Andrew 
Wilson,  Thomas  Foster,  and  A.  C. 
Ranyard.     With  Illustrations,     y.  6d. 

Rossetti's  (Maria  F.)  A  Shadow  of  Dante,  y.  6d. 

Smith's  (R.  Bosisorth)  Carthage  and  the  Cartha- 
ginians.    With  Maps,  Plans,  etc.     35.  6d. 

Stanley's  (Bishop)  Familiar  History  of  Birds. 

With  160  Illustrations.     3J.  6d. 

Stephen's  (Sir  Leslie)  The  Playground  of  Europe 
(The  Alps).     With  4  Illustrations.      3.^.  6d. 

Stevenson's  (R.  L.)  The  Strange  Case  of  Dr. 
Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde;  with  other  Fables,  y.bd. 

Stevenson  (R.  L.)  and  Osbourne's  (LI.)  The 
Wrong  Box.     3^.  6d. 

Stevenson  (Robert  Louis)  and  Stevenson's 
(Fanny  van  de  Grift)  More  New  Arabian 
Nights. — The  Dynamiter,     y.  6d. 

Trevelyan's  (Sir  G.  0.)  The  Early  History  of 
Charles  James  Fox.     y.  6d. 

Weyman's  (Stanley  J.)  The  House  of  the 
Wolf :  a  Romance.     3^.  6d. 

Wood's  (Rev.  J.  G.)  Petland  Revisited.     With 

33  Illustrations      3^.  6d. 

Wood's  (Rev.  J.  G.)  Strange  Dwellings.  With 
60  Illustrations,     y.  6d. 

Wood's  (Rev.  J.  G.)  Out  of  Doors.     With  11 

Illustrations,     y.  6d. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Cookery,   Domestic  Management,   &e. 


Acton.  —  Modern  Cookery.  By 
Eliza  Acton.  With  150  Woodcuts.  Fcp. 
8vo.,  4s.  6rf. 

Angwin. — Simple  Hints  on  Choice 
OF  Food,  with  Tested  and  Economical 
Recipes.  I*\)r  Schools,  Homes,  and  Classes 
for  Technical  Instruction.  ByM.C.  Angwin, 
Diplomate  (First  Class)  of  the  National 
Union  for  the  Technical  Training  of  Women, 
etc.     Crown  8vo.,  is. 

Ashby. — Health  in  the  Nursery. 
By  Henry  Ashby,  M.D.,  F.R.C.P.,  Physi- 
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With  25  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  net. 

Bull  (Thomas,  M.D.). 

Hints  to  Mothers  on  the  Man- 
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The  Maternal  Management  of 
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De  Salis  (Mrs.). 

A  LA  Mode  Cookery:  Up-to- 
date  Recipes.  With  24  Plates  (16  in 
Colour).     Crown  8vo.,5s.  net. 

Cakes  and  Confections  ^  la 
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De  Salis   (Mrs.) — continued. 
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IS.  bd. 

Floral  Decorations.      Fcp.  8vo., 

IS.  bd. 

Gardening  a  la  Mode.  Fcp.  Svo. 
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National  Viands  A  LA  Mode.  Fcp. 
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Sweets  and  Supper  Dishes  a  la 
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Lear. — Maigre  Cookery.    By  H.  L. 

Sidney  Lear.     i6mo.,  2s. 

Poole. — Cookery  FOR  the  Diabetic. 
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Rotheram. — Household  Cookery 
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Diplomee,  National  Training  School  of 
Cookery,  London  ;  Instructress  to  the  Bed- 
fordshire County  Council.     Crown  8vo.,  2s. 


The  Fine  Arts  and  Music. 


Burne-Jones. — The  Beginning  of 

the  World  :  Twenty-five  Pictures  by 
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Burns  and  Colenso. — Living  Ana- 
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II J  by  8f  ins.,  each  Plate  containing  Two 
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Hamlin.—^  Text-Book  of  the 
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Haweis  (Rev.  H.  R.). 

Music  and  Morals.  With  Portrait 
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My  Musical  Life.  With  Portrait 
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Crown  8vo.,  6s.  net. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS.         37 


The  Fine  Arts  and  Music — continued. 


Huish,    Head,    and    Longman.— 

Samplers  and  Tapestry  Embroideries. 
By  Marcus  B.  Huish,  LL.B.  ;  also  'The 
Stitchery  of  the  Same,'  by  Mrs.  Head  ; 
and  '  Foreign  Samplers,'  by  Mrs.  C.  J. 
Longman.  With  30  Reproductions  in 
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chrome.    4to.,  £2  2.S.  net. 

Hullah. —  The  History  of  Modern 
Music.     By  John  Hullah.     8vo.,  8s.  6rf. 

Jameson  (Mrs.  Anna). 

Sacred  and  Legendary  Art,  con- 
taining  Legends  of  the  Angels  and  Arch- 
angels, the  Evangelists,  the  Apostles,  the 
Doctors  of  the  Church,  St.  Mary  Mag- 
dalene, the  Patron  Saints,  the  Martyrs, 
the  Early  Bishops,  the  Hermits,  and  the 
Warrior-Saints  of  Christendom,  as  repre- 
sented in  the  Fine  Arts.  With  19  Etchings 
and  187  Woodcuts.    2  vols.    8vo.,  205.  net. 

Legends  of  the  Monastic  Orders, 
as  represented  in  the  Fine  Arts,  com- 
prising the  Benedictines  and  Augustines, 
and  Orders  derived  from  their  Rules,  the 
Mendicant  Orders,  the  Jesuits,  and  the 
Order  of  the  Visitation  of  St.  Mary.  With 
II  Etchings  and  88  Woodcuts.  i  vol. 
8vo.,  105.  net. 

Legends  of  the  Madonna,  or 
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and  without  the  Infant  Jesus,  Historical 
from  the  Annunciation  to  the  Assumption, 
as  represented  in  Sacred  and  Legendary 
Christian  Art.  With  27  Etchings  and 
165  Woodcuts.     I  vol.     8vo.,  los.  net. 

The  History  of  Our  Lord,  as  ex- 
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His  Types,  St.  John  the  Baptist,  and 
other  persons  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment. Commenced  by  the  late  Mrs. 
Jameson  ;  continued  and  completed  by 
Lady  Eastlake.  With  31  Etchings 
and  281  Woodcuts.    2  vols.    8vo.,  20s.  net. 

Kristeller.  —  Andrea      Mantegna  . 

By  Pall  Kkisteller.  English  Edition  by 
S.  Arthur  Strong,  M.A.,  Librarian  to  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  at  Chatsworth.  With 
26  Photogravure  Plates  and  162  Illustrations 
in  the  Text.     4to.,  gilt  top,  ^3  los.  net. 

Macfarren.  —  Lectures    on    Har- 
mony.     By  Sir  George   A.   Macfarren. 

8V0.,   I2i. 


Morris  (William). 
Architecture,      Industry      and 
Wealth.      Collected     Papers.      Crown 
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Hopes  and  Fears  for  Art.  Five 
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An  Address  delivered  at  the 
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Some  Hints  on  Pattern-Design- 
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Robertson. — Old    English    Songs 

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Vanderpoel. —  Colour  Problems  : 
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Van  Dyke. — A  Text-Book  on  the 
History  of  Painting.  By  John  C.  Van 
Dyke.    With  no  Illustrations.    Cr.  8vo.,  6s. 

Wellington. — A  Descriptive  and 
Historical  Catalogue  of  the  Collec- 
tions of  Pictures  and  Sculpture  at 
Apsley  House,  London.  By  Evelyn, 
Duchess  of  Wellington.  Illustrated  by  52 
Photo-Engravings,  specially  executed  by 
Braun,  Clkment,  &.  Co.,  of  Paris.  2  vols., 
royal  4to.,  £6  6s.  net. 

Willard.  —  History  of  Modern 
Italian  Art.  By  Ashton  Rollins 
Willard.  Part  L  Sculpture.  Part  IL 
Painting.  Part  III.  Architecture.  With 
Photogravure  Frontispiece  and  numerous 
full-page  Illustrations.      8vo.,  21s.  net. 


38         MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Miscellaneous  and  Critical  Works. 


Auto  da  Fe  and  other  Essays : 

some  being  Essays  in  Fiction.  By  the 
Author  of  '  Essays  in  Paradox  '  and  '  Ex- 
ploded Ideas'.     Crown  8vo.,  5s. 

3a.gehot.—I'/T£RARy  Stuvies.     By 

Walter  Bagehot.  With  Portrait.  3  vols. 
Crown  Svo.,  3s.  6d.  each. 

Baker.  —  Educa  tjon  and  Life  : 
Papers  and  Addresses.  By  James  H. 
Baker,  M.A.,  LL.D.     Crown  Svo.,  4s.  6d. 

Baring- Gould. —  Curious  Myths  of 
THE  Middle  Ages.  By  Rev.  S.  Baring- 
Gould.     Crown  Svo.,  3s.  dd. 

Baynes.  —  Shakespeare  Studies, 
and  other  Essays.  By  the  late  Thomas 
Spencer  Bavnes,  LL.B.,  LL.D.  With  a 
Biographical  Preface  by  Professor  Lewis 
Campbell.     Crown  Svo.,  7s.  &d. 

Bonnell.  —  Charlotte  BrontS, 
George  Eliot,  Jane  Austen:  Studies  in 
their  Works.  By  Henry  H.  Bonnell. 
Crown  Svo.,  7s.  6(/.  net. 

Booth. — The  Discovery  and  De- 
cipherment OF  THE  Trilingual  Cunei- 
form Inscriptions.  By  Arthur  John 
Booth,  M.A.  With  a  Plan  of  Persepolis. 
Svo.     14s.  net. 

Charities  Register,  The  Annual, 

AND  Digest:  being  a  Classified  Register 
of  Charities  in  or  available  in  the  Metropolis. 
Svo.,  5s.  net. 

Christie. — Selected  Essays.  By 
Richard  Copley  Christie,  M.A.,  Oxon. 
Hon.  LL.D.,  Vict.  With  2  Portraits  and  3 
other  Illustrations.     Svo.,  12s.  net. 

Dickinson. — King  Arthur  in  Corn- 
wall. By  W.  HowsHip  Dickinson,  M.D. 
With  5  Illustrations.     Crown  Svo.,  4s.  &d. 

Essays  in  Paradox.    By  the  Author 

of  '  Exploded  Ideas  '  and  '  Times  and 
Days  '.     Crown  Svo.,  5s. 

Evans. — The   Ancient   Stone    Im- 
plements, Weapons  and  Ornaments  of 
Great   Britain.      By   Sir   John   Evans, 
K.C.B.      With     537     Illustrations.      Svo.,  - 
los.   Qd.  net. 

'Ryi.plodQ.d.ld^SiSjAND  Other  Essays. 

By  the  Author  of 'Times  and  Days'.  Cr, 
Svo.,  5s. 


Frost.  —  A  Medley  Book.  By 
George  Frost.     Crown  Svo.,  3s.  6rf.  net. 

Geikie. — The  Vicar  and  his  Eriends. 
Reported  by  Cunningham  Geikie,  D.D., 
LL.D.     Crown  Svo.,  5s.  net. 

Gilkes.  —  The  New  Revolution. 
By  A.  H.  Gilkes,  Master  of  Dulwich 
College.      Fcp.  Svo.,  is.  net. 

Haggard  (H.  Rider). 

A  Farmer's  Year:  being  his  Com- 
monplace Book  for  1S9S.  With  36  Illus- 
trations.    Crown  Svo.,  7s.  bd.  net. 

Rural  England.  With  23  Agri- 
cultural Maps  and  56  Illustrations  from 
Photographs.     2  vols.,  Svo.,  36s.  net. 

Hoenig.  —  Inquiries  concerning 
THE  Tactics  of  the  Future.  By  Fritz 
HoENiG.  With  I  Sketch  in  the  Text  and  5 
Maps.  Translated  by  Captain  H.  M.  Bower. 
Svo.,  15s.  net. 

Hutchinson. — Dreams  and  their 
Meanings.  By  Horace  G.  Hutchinson. 
Svo.,  gilt  top,  gs.  6(7.  net. 

Jefferies  (Richard). 

Field  and  Hedgerow :  With  Por- 
trait.    Crown  Svo.,  3s.  bd. 

The  Story  of  My  Heart:  my 
Autobiography.     Crown  Svo.,  3s.  bd. 

Red  Deer.  With  17  Illustrations. 
Crown  Svo.,  3s.  bd. 

The  Toilers  of  the  Field.   Crown 

Svo.,  3s.  bd. 

Wood  Magic  :  a  Fable.  Crown 
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Jekyll  (Gertrude). 

Home  and  Garden  :  Notes  and 
Thoughts,  Practical  and  Critical,  of  a 
Worker  in  both.  With  53  Illustrations 
from  Photographs.     Svo.,  los.  bd.  net. 

Wood  and  Garden:  Notes  and 
Thoughts,  Practical  and  Critical,  of  a 
Working  Amateur.  With  71  Photographs. 
Svo..  los.  bd.  net. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


39 


Miscellaneous  and  Critical  Works — continued. 


Johnson  (J.  &J.  H.). 

The  Patentee  s  Manual  :  a 
Treatise  on  tlie  Law  and  Practice  of 
Letters  Patent.     8vo.,  ids.  6d. 

An  Epitome  of  the  Law  and 
Practice  connected  with  Patents 
FOR  Iaventions,  with  a  reprint  of  the 
Patents  Acts  of  1883,  1885,  1886  and 
1888.     Crown  8vo.,  25.  6f^ 


Joyce. —  The  Origin  and  History 
OF  Irish  Names  of  Places.  By  P.  W. 
Joyce,  LL.D.    2  vols.    Crown  8vo.,  5s.  each. 


Lang  (Andrew). 

Letters  to  Dead  Authors. 
8vo.,   25.    6d.  net. 


Fcp. 


Books  and  Bookmen.  With  2 
Coloured  Plates  and  17  Illustrations. 
Fcp.  8vo.,  25.  6(f.  net. 

Old  Friends.  Fcp.  8vo.,  25,  6d.  net. 
Letters    on    Literature.      Fcp. 

8vo.,  2s.  6rf.   net. 

Essays  IN  Little.  With  Portrait 
of  the  Author.     Crown  8vo.,  2s.  bd. 

Cock  Lane  and  Common-Sense. 
Crown  8vo.,  35.  6rf. 

The  Book  of  Dreams  and  Ghosts. 
Crown  8vo.,  3s.  bd.  . 


Maryon. — ILon-  the  Garden  Grew. 
By  Maud  Maryon.  With  4  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  5s.  net. 


Matthews. — Notes  on  Speech- 
Making.  By  Brander  Matthews.  Fcp. 
Svo.,  IS.  bd.  net. 


Max  Miiller  (The  Right  Hon.  F.). 
Co  elected  Works.    18  vols.   Crown 

8vo.,  55.  each. 

Vol.  L  Natural  Religion:  the  Gilford 
Lectures,  1888. 

Vol.  IL  Physical  Religion:  the  Gifford 
Lectures,  1890. 

Vol.  in.    Anthropological  Religion: 
the  Gifford  Lectures,  1891. 

Vol.  IV.    Theosophy  :  or.  Psychological 
Religion  :  the  Gifford  Lectures,  1892. 


Chips  from  a  German  Workshop. 

Vol.  V.   Recent  Essays  and  Addresses. 

Vol.  VI.  Biographical  Essays. 

Vol.  VII.  Essays  on  Language  and  Litera- 
ture. 

Vol.    VIII.    Essays   on    Mythology    and 
Folk-lore. 


Vol.  IX.  The  Origin  and  Growth  of 
Religion,  as  Illustrated  by  the  Re- 
ligions of  India  :  the  Hibbert  Lectures, 

1878. 

Vol.  X.  Biographies  of  Words,  and 
THE  Home  of  the  Arvas. 

Vols.  XL,  XII.  The  Science  of 
Language:  Founded  on  Lectures  de- 
livered at  the  Royal  Institution  in  i86i 
and  1863.     2  vols.     105. 


Vol.  XIII.   India 
Us? 


What  can  it  Teach 


Vol.  XIV.  Introduction  to  the 
Science  of  Religion.  Four  Lectures, 
1870. 

Vol.  XV.  R.4Makr\sh^a  :  his  Life  and 
Sayings. 

Vol.  XVI.  Three  Lectures  on  the 
Veda  NT  A  Philosophy,  1894. 

Vol.  XVII.  Last  Essays.  First  Series. 
Essays  on  Language,  Folk-lore,  etc. 

Vol.  XVIII.  LaStEssays.  Second  Series. 
Essays  on  the  Science  of  Religion. 


40         MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Miscellaneous  and  Critical  ^ ovV's^—co^itimied. 


Milner. — Country  Pleasures  :  the 
Chronicle  of  a  Year  chiefly  in  a  Garden. 
By  George  Milner.     Crown  8vo.,  35.  bd. 

Morris. — Signs  of  Change.  Seven 
Lectures  delivered  on  various  Occasions. 
By  William  Morris.     Post  8vo.,  45.  bd. 

Parker  and  Unwin.— 7>/^  Art  of 

Building  a  Home  :  a  Collection  of 
Lectures  and  Illustrations.  By  Barry 
Parker  and  Raymond  Unvvin.  With  68 
Full-page  Plates.     8vo.,  105.  bd.  net. 

Pollock.^/^ivs  Austen:  her  Con- 
temporaries and  Herself.  By  Walter 
Herries  Pollock.     Cr.  8vo.,  3s.  bd.  net. 

Poore  (George  Vivian,  M,D.). 

Essays  on  Rural  Hygiene.  With 
13  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  6j.  bd. 

The  Dwelling  Housf-  With  36 
Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  bd. 

The  Earth  in  Relation  to  the 
Preservation  and  Destruction  of 
CoNTAGiA  :  being  the  Milroy  Lectures 
delivered  at  the  Royal  College  of  Physi- 
cians in  1899,  together  with  other  Papers 
on  Sanitation.  With  13  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  5s. 

Colonial  and  Camp  Sanitation. 

With  II  Illustrations.     Cr.  8vo.,  25.  net. 

Rossetti.  -A  Shadow  of  Dante  : 
being  an  Essay  towards  studying  Himself, 
his  World  and  his  Pilgrimage.  By  Maria 
Francesca  Rossetti.     Crown  8vo.,  35.  bd. 

Seria    Ludo.       By    a    Dilettante. 

Post  4to. ,  5s.  net. 

*^*  Sketches  and   Verses,  mainly  reprinted 
from  the  St.  jfaiiu's's  Gazette. 

Shadwell.  —  Drink  :  Temperance 
AND  Legislation.  By  Arthur  Shadwell, 
M.A.,  M.D.     Crown  8vo.,  55.  net. 


Soulsby  (Lucy  H.  M.). 

Stra  y     Tho  ughts 
Fcp.  8vo.,  25.  bd.  net. 


ON    Reading. 


Stra  y  Thoughts  for  Girls,   i 6mo., 
15.  bd   net. 
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Soulsby  (Lucy  H.  M.)— continued. 

Stra  y  Thoughts  for  Mothers  and 
Teachers.     Fcp.  8vo.,  2s.  6d.  net. 


Stray    Thoughts    for    Invalids. 
i6mo.,  25.  net. 

Stray  Thoughts   on  Character. 
Fcp.  8vo.,  25.  bd.  net. 

Southey. — The  Correspondence  of 
RobertSoutheywithCarolineBowlbs. 
Edited  by  Edward  Dowden.     8vo.,  145. 

Stevens. — On  the  Stowage  of  Ships 
and  their  Cargoes.  With  Information  re- 
garding Freights,  Charter- Parties,  etc.  By 
Robert  White  Stevens.     8vo.,  215. 


Thuillier.  —  The  Principles  of  Land 
Defence,  and  their  Application  to  the 
Conditions  of  To-day.  By  Captain  H. 
F.  Thuillier,  R.E.  With  Maps  and  Plans. 
8vo.,  125.  bd.  net. 


Turner  and  Sutherland.— 7>/£^  De- 
velopment of  Alstralian  Literature. 
By  Henry  Gyles  Turner  and  Alexander 
Sutherland.  With  Portraits  and  Illustra- 
tions.    Crown  8vo.  ,  55. 


Warwick. — Progress  in  Women's 
Educa  tionin the  BritishEmpire  :  being 
the  Report  of  Conferences  and  a  Congress 
held  in  connection  with  the  Educational 
Section,  Victorian  Era  Exhibition.  Edited 
by  the  Countess  of  Warwick.    Cr.  8vo.  65. 


Weathers. — A  Practical  Guide  to 
Garden  Plants.  By  John  Weathers, 
F.R.H.S.  With  159  Diagrams.  8vo.,  21s. 
net. 


W^hittall. PREDERICK     THE      GREA  T 

ON  Kingcraft,  from  the  Original  Manu- 
script ;  with  Reminiscences  and  Turkish 
Stories.  By  Sir  J.  William  Whittall, 
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